


Black Widows or White Knights

by casa_de_elite



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Marvel Cinematic Universe Fusion, F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Porn With Plot, Shameless Smut, Shaw is a Black Widow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-06-17 06:38:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 40,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15455523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casa_de_elite/pseuds/casa_de_elite
Summary: Shaw didn’t have feelings. She didn’t. It’s how they engineered her to be – they being the Red Room, they being Ivan. What happens when she is tasked to follow a cute brunette S.H.I.E.L.D. agent with legs for days?Sexy times, espionage, and blood. That’s what happens.OR Root is a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and Shaw is tasked by the Red Room to follow and maybe/maybe not kill her.





	1. The Red Hand of Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Monsters are real, ghosts are real too. They live inside us and sometimes, they win._  
>  ~ Stephen King

She was never supposed to have a happy ending.

Shaw had been standing on the cold snowy roads on the border of Belarus and Russia late one winter night. Her family car was burning, Shaw was helpless. She could see her parent’s burning faces, she could remember the feeling of being semi-conscious as she was yanked out of the wreckage.  
She remembered turning to the burly man, the man who had saved her life. He had held out his hand to the small, brunette child. He waited until she took it and then led her away into the night.  
Little would Shaw know that was the last time she would have had her freedom.

After 10 years in the Red Room, she had almost forgotten what freedom felt like.

Shaw had learned quickly to trust her masters; an overwhelming sense of loyalty had been born when Ivan saved her that day.

Her mind whirred as she passed the front of a shop, stirring up memories of a little girl holding her mother’s hand as they shopped for fruit. But she paid those memories no attention.  
She wasn’t allowed to remember, even the memories of how she came to be a Black Widow should have been beaten out of her, she wasn’t even sure if they were real or fabricated.  
They gave her treatment if she remembered, so she acted like they expected her to – like a robot – to avoid being given the treatment.

She knew her name wasn’t Shaw at the beginning, but that’s what she’d been given.

She had adopted many different personas in her lifetime – sexy seductress in the US, Iranian business woman in Russia, but the DJing cover on the West Coast was by far her favourite. Shaw was a chameleon, and she was a damn good one.

She hadn’t felt anything other than loyalty after the car accident that killed her parents. There had been the odd recruit who hadn’t learnt to control their emotions. Shaw remembered an older girl - she was brunette, Katya? - who came back to the beds crying one night. Feelings were not permitted in the Red Room.  
She hadn’t seen Katya since.

Shaw was stronger than Katya, stronger than any other girl in the program. Well, apart from that one rumour she’d heard floating around the Red Room’s walls of a blonde sent in deep cover to the United States.  
But she didn’t listen to rumours.  
Rumours were lies fabricated to instil fear or competition.  
Shaw was the strongest, there was no doubt in her mind.

Ivan, her Master, had taught her well; he had called her the Soviet Union’s secret weapon.  
Until the Soviet Union became HYDRA. Then she had a new Master.  
Same type of mission, different targets.

She was told to kill and that’s what she did. It’s what she was good at. It’s what she was engineered to do.

Shaw remembered her current mission and continued down the cobbled streets of the city, carefully avoiding any cameras. She felt the comforting weight of the weapon in her purse as she strolled on the path towards the target’s house.

Andrey Smirnov was a pimp who used to sell girls into the Red Room program. He had stopped the service and Ivan hadn’t liked that. She had been sent to kill Mr. Smirnov.

Even if she did feel remorse or guilt, it was beaten out of her.

Shaw wandered through the quiet streets of Viciebsk in Belarus.  
As the light was going down, Shaw began to get colder. She wrapped the scarf tighter around her neck and nuzzled into it.  
She spotted the apartment eventually and noticed a yellow light flooding out of it.  
The apartment looked small, cramped, the plaster on the building was peeling off. Shaw didn’t pay it any attention.

She circled the building and silently climbed the emergency stairwell, slipping into the apartment through an open window.

She was quiet as she cleared the bedroom she’d entered into. Her standard issue pistol was drawn and she held it up to eye-level.

She located the target on the sofa. She shot him once in chest – clean and concise – and then rounded the sofa to identify him as the target. She put the gun against his forehead and shot him again.  
She stared at nothing, her face was expressionless as she cleaned the blood spray off her hand and weapon.  
She was doing what needed to be done. What she was made for. What she was engineered to do.  
Her life didn’t belong to her anymore. She was the property of HYDRA. She was no one special, no one different. She was just another agent. Nothing more. Compliance was key, and compliance would be rewarded.

Shaw did a final check of the room, her hardened eyes flicking over the body and the pool of blood on the sofa surrounding the corpse.  
She made her way to the extraction point without another thought to the life she’d just taken.

 

After the flight back to the base in Finow, Germany, she got to her room and deposited her weapon with her Master.  
She stripped herself of her clothes and laid them carefully on the radiator in the corner of her room.

She relaxed on to the hard bed, lay on her back as she always did, and with a cold click she cuffed her wrist to the bedpost.

Her feelings of regret and her determination to forget her emotions had her on the edge of a knife. She wasn’t sure which way she would fall, or if she would die either way.  
No matter. Shaw’s life belonged to the Red Room, to Ivan, to HYDRA. She was nobody. She was just another agent. Nothing more.

The door swung open and Ivan entered, his cane tapping on the floor as he walked.  
His beard was greyer than she remembered, though she had only left a week ago. She sat up in the small bed, looking straight forward, the metal cuffs clanging with the movement.

“You have a new mission,” he stated in his heavily accented voice, “You’re flying to America tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, Master,” Shaw replied.

With that, he exited.

What could they possibly want from _that_ cesspool of a country?

 

* * *

 

Agent Root rubbed her gloved hands together as the snow began to fall on to them. It wasn’t the delicate snow, either, it was the type she remembered from Poland that made your face numb and forced you indoors.  
She pouted at the weather and ducked into a nearby library.

Her fingers ran over the cover of an old book. She picked it off the bookshelf and flipped the pages. An odd recollection sprinted through her mind – it was of Dostoyevsky, of reading in Russian in front of a class. Root shook her head and the memory disappeared.  
Memories like that were always so transient, so momentary, that she didn’t pay them any attention now.  
They didn’t mean anything.

She was Root. She was an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. She didn’t care for memories that didn’t feel like memories, or feelings that didn’t feel like her own.  
She placed the book – Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky – back in it’s position and clasped her hands in front of herself.  
Her partner, Agent Martine Rousseau, came in a second later and shook her head.

The woman they’d been tracking, the Red Room agent, had escaped. She had avoided all security cameras again.  
She had murdered another man and they were no closer to identifying her.

Root tried not to sigh in frustration as she wiped the dew from her face.  
S.H.I.E.L.D. had them on a fool’s errand trying to capture this agent. Everyone who had _any_ field experience knew you couldn’t catch a Black Widow unless she wanted to be found.

Root had to admit she appreciated their talents, though she would never say it out loud. There was something about the skill and finesse with which they worked that spoke to something inside Root.

“What do we do now?” Martine asked her, eyes scanning tensely around the library.

Root shrugged and took a bite of the apple she’d been saving, “Enjoy the view.”

They wandered out into the streets of the city in Belarus and Root tried to get lost in the scenery.  
She glanced at the soft buildings, her focused eyes taking in every small detail about the city.

The thin layer of snow covered the cobbled streets like a sheet of paper and Root took great joy in marking it with her footsteps.

They reached the apartment; she felt Martine pause behind her and turned to face her partner.

“What, are you in shock?” Root asked bluntly as she stared at her in ennui.

Martine turned to the side and Root followed her gaze to an old man huddled in an alley.  
Martine approached the man, who looked to have seen better days. He was hunched over a bottle of tequila, eyes barely staying open. His trousers stuck to his skin and he shivered, like someone coming off a high.

“Did you see anything last night, sir?” Root asked him in Russian after kneeling down in front of him. 

He avoided her gaze and slurred the words back, “ _Doch_ , I suggest you ask someone sober.”

 _‘Daughter’ he calls_ _me;_ Root felt a nagging in her mind, as if she was meant to be remembering something but her mind was blank. With a blink, the mask of indifference was put back up.

She looked up at Martine and saw her gesture for them to move. She got up from her crouch and moved her leather jacket so it was covering the swell of her gun.

After walking a few paces with Martine, Root turned to face her, “We should head back to the US. We have no real leads here, and we can do more research at home with our resources.”

“Director Fury said we needed to fly out so we flew out,” Martine said in her monotonous yet condescending tone, “If he says we should go back, then we will.”

She shook her head, “This is a waste of time,” Root was never really one for authority figures.

“Trust the system, Root,” Martine said before breaking off to get them some hot chocolate.

Root rubbed her hands together again, trying to get rid of the numbness.

Everything was going to plan.  
No one suspected a thing.


	2. The Red Curtain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _When you have no future, you live in the past._  
>  ~ John Grisham

_The air was dense, hot – hot like the deserts of Arabia, far different to how she remembered Lublin. But the scenery was still as she recalled. Tall buildings cast looming shadows on to her short figure, light shone down on her, almost burning her neck._  
_The fall of the Soviet government in Poland was starting to advance and the lively square she found herself running into was amass with protesters from the Polish Resistance, Root couldn’t help but stumble between them._  
_The air became colder, until she was certain of the cold sweat covering her body. Then the gunshots rang out in the square and everyone was screaming._  
_Root ran across sloping cobbled streets as quick as her little legs took her, winding through lifeless bodies, trying to ignore the stench of blood._

_As the sun went down, Root had sprinted back to her home, but there was nothing left of it – the rubble was indistinguishable from her neighbour’s house. The crackling fire filled her senses, the harsh scent of burning making her look around in a helpless type of panic._

_She thought she saw her Papa but she couldn't be sure. The man crawling out of her house had burn marks across his cheek, more on his hands as they reached out towards her._

_She couldn’t bring herself to move. Her Papa was whispering something at her, and then shouting it. She couldn't hear him. She couldn't move._

_She felt someone put their hand on her shoulder and turned to see an older man with a dusty grey beard looking down at her with piercing blue eyes._

Root’s eyes flew open and for a moment she was still in Poland, she was still that helpless little girl. But then her mind caught up to body and she rolled off the side of the bed to lodge her feet under her dresser to do her morning sit-ups.

Memories like that came and went for Root; they were never clear, either. Like film on an old VHS tape – there was static and discrepancies until Root wasn’t sure what was real and what she’d made up.

All she knew about herself was her name and that she may have come from Poland. Her early years were a blur; either she didn't know or her memory just wasn't that good. She was pretty sure she came from Poland though, that was insinuated from her reccuring nightmare. She wondered if the man crawling out of her house  _was_ her Papa.

But that would mean he died. Root didn't want him to die.

He wasn't her Papa, she decided.

They had flown back to the US an hour after she convinced Fury of the pointlessness of staying in Belarus when the Black Widow was almost certainly long gone.

She was the best agent S.H.I.E.L.D. had ever had, and she was proud of that. Her experience as a hacker and a killer for hire was what got her on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s radar in a bad way. But she didn’t particularly care.  
It’s what she was good at; her mother (she was her mother, right?) always used to tell her to follow her talents. Besides, it was the only thing Root knew. It turned out she was good at shooting too, she was the best in her cohort in the S.H.I.E.L.D Academy.

She got up off the floor and opened the file on her dresser, reading over her notes on the Black Widow she and Martine were tracking.

1) She was shorter than average, but athletic.  
2) She was able to change her appearance.  
3) She knew multiple languages, including Russian, Spanish, and German.

And that was all the knowledge S.H.I.E.L.D. had on her. No name, no face. It was like she was a ghost.  
Root respected her for that.

Root flicked through the case file and found the information from her latest lead from Belarus. The man who’d been killed was a pimp who sold girls into the Red Room Program. If they could track the transactions, they could find those working for the Red Room.

Root nodded to herself, overcome with a determination that would see this Black Widow behind bars, stuck a plain white shirt on and put her weapon in her hip holster.  
She grabbed her blazer and money to buy her baguette at lunch before locking up, putting the length of string on her lock; she was already late though.

She was pocketing her key when she turned to see a woman stumbling up the stairs, struggling to carry a suitcase that looked far too big for her small frame.  
She had dark brown hair, in loose ringlets that framed her face. She was wearing a tired expression, but it immediately brightened when she spotted Root.  
She looked... vaguely familiar.

_From where?_

“Hi!” The woman’s voice called and the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent smiled back.

Root watched on with a teasing smirk as the woman struggled for another beat until she took pity on her and yanked the suitcase up the last few stairs.

“I could have managed myself,” the woman huffed but then a smile broke out across her features, “I’m Sameen, everyone calls me Sam or Shaw. I just moved here.”

Root nodded her head at the suitcase, “I can tell,” she took the outstretched hand, “I’m Root.”

Shaw smiled at her a second longer before her eyes dropped down to their still adjoined hands. She rolled her eyes bashfully and dropped her hand, stuffing it into her pocket.

There was a silence while Shaw looked to be finding something to talk about.

“I should go to work,” Root declared finally.

“Sure, don’t let me keep you,” Shaw responded with another smile. The woman smiled an awful lot.

“Welcome to the apartment complex, sweetie.” Root said as she pranced down the stairs.

“Thanks!” Shaw called after her but Root didn’t acknowledge her, she was already halfway down the stairs.

 

* * *

 

Shaw’s eyes hardened as she listened to the footfalls that indicated the target had reached the bottom of the stairs. She turned to the door the target had come out of and carefully lifted the thin film off her hand.  
She had been forewarned about the extra measures S.H.I.E.L.D. had created so that unauthorised personnel couldn’t get into their agents’ apartments.

Shaw knelt down and pressed the film to the door knob and she heard a series of clicks; tricking the hand-print readers was simple. She got her lock picking tools out and got to work.  
It was easier than she thought. Though, of course, the Red Room had trained her to do this.

She cracked the door open and raised an eyebrow when she saw something fall from the lock; she picked up the centimetre-long string and put it in her pocket for later.

Shaw did a quick inventory of the room – it was scarcely furnished. A dresser was next to a bed but Shaw was surprised at the minimalism.  
The metal bed in the corner of the room was sterile, it reminded Shaw of the beds back in the Red Room. It offered her a small comfort, though she was taught not to rely on comfort.  
It was the sort of room that families hated but lone wolves loved. The target seemed very much like a lone wolf.  
It was impersonal, no pictures of family or friends.

The target had the build of a dancer – Ivan had told her that was the target’s hobby – and Shaw didn’t miss the sight of her muscles concealed under the blazer.  
Shaw could appreciate the discipline and talent of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Too bad she played for the wrong team.

She was snooping in the dresser, searching through the target’s undergarments when she spotted a small wooden jewellery box. It was old, the shiny finish was chipping away.  
Shaw tentatively opened it and clenched her jaw when she saw the figure of a ballerina pirouetting elegantly while a soft melody played out in the room.

In the Red Room the recruits were expected to pick an activity. There was Advanced Survival training, Advanced Computing, Ballet. Shaw hadn’t taken ballet but she had vivid memories of an older blonde girl training against Tchaikovsky’s choreographies in the ballet, pushing her body to the limit.  
The girl would practice in front of a mirror, the teacher’s steely claps felt like hollow thuds in the room. The notes from the piano in the corner of the room felt like a distant cry and Shaw couldn’t help but spy on her. Shaw would watch with intense concentration at the rippling muscles, at the thin layer of sweat shining on her skin.  
But that’s all she got to see. She was hurried along for her Advanced Survival training.  
Shaw had chosen Judo and Ad. Survival. Judo helped her core strength, and helped to instil a sense of discipline, though Ivan was sure to discipline her regardless. But she was the star pupil in her cohort, maybe even the whole program (bar that damned rumour).

Others in the Ad. Survival course had chosen to drop out; Shaw had seen them running back inside the Red Room facility vomiting up their bread for the day. Stupid. Weak.  
Shaw was stronger than them. She was made of marble. She wouldn’t break.

There was a small kitchen, an even smaller bathroom. Nothing notable in either.  
With a final look around the room, Shaw left, making sure to put the string back on the lock.

She got into her own room – right next to the target, though she wasn’t sure how Ivan had managed that for her – and found its layout exactly the same as the target’s.

Her cover was a fumbling (that much she could do in her sleep) museum curator from Miami looking for work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She had learnt enough about the Roman Republic to get around. Her hobby was baseball, she kept a bat in her room; it would double as a useful weapon too.

Ivan had told her to find John Reese. He was her contact here. He would be there when she needed him.  
The mission wasn’t to kill the target, not yet anyway. Ivan had told her to simply observe. To get close enough to strike but not yet.

She found it invigorating, the thrill of the chase.  
But eventually she would have to make Ivan proud.

She would be the killer he made her into. She belonged to the Red Room, to HYDRA. She was nothing more.

She began to put her clothes away in the cupboard, laying her handcuffs gently on the dresser.  
A stray thought of wrapping the cuffs around the target’s pretty wrists flashed through her mind before she could stop it.

But Shaw shook her head and armed herself with her sniper rifle. She unassembled it and stuffed it into a backpack.

She took a final look around at the hollow shell of a home and glanced at her phone, at the blinking light telling her where the target was. The skin tracker had taken to Root's wrist.  
It was all going to plan. She was in.

It was only a matter of time before she gained the target’s trust, before she was able to feel them strong muscles fighting against her, before she saw those intense eyes trained on her and only her. It was only a matter of time.

 

 

She assembled the sniper rifle in the window. She watched through the building made almost entirely of glass as the target sipped her coffee and wandered through the doors of the Hub.

The Hub was massive, and Shaw knew of the underground area too. That’s where they kept the aircrafts and other such transport.  
It was all made of glass apart from the rooms at the back, Shaw observed from her station.  
She was in the building adjacent to the Hub. She had incapacitated the man to whom the apartment belonged to. He wasn’t going to be a problem. She glanced back at him, at the bloody shirt from where she slit his throat, and then returned her attention to the target.

People around the target scattered, obviously seeing the frown set on the target’s face.

She was undoubtedly hot, a bit too tiring though with her teasing smirks and quick-witted responses, but those eyes made up for it. There was an intensity to them, one that Shaw couldn’t exactly place. There was something about the target that didn’t sit right with Shaw.  
But she buried those emotions, like she was taught to do.

She observed the target through her scope, allowing a small frown to take over her features when she saw the target approach a man on the computer, leaning down so her face was level with the man’s ear.

A flare of jealousy shot through Shaw’s chest but she buried it quickly when the man jumped away from the target. He had scraggly hair, and the expression of a shocked deer caught in headlights looked natural on him, Shaw figured it was his usual expression.

As the midday sun began to burn her back, Shaw watched the target waltz around in the office.  
It was getting boring, but Shaw found she didn’t mind analysing the target’s mannerisms. A quirk of her lips here, a roll of her eyes there. They were fascinating.

She wasn’t getting off mission; Ivan told her to observe and that’s what she was doing. There was a comfort working for Ivan. She did as she was told. She followed the rules.

Her pulse began to quicken when she lost sight of the target. She frantically scanned the building with her scope but she couldn’t see her.  
Shaw had gotten distracted.

Reese could take it from here. He worked at S.H.I.E.L.D. along with Root, he could spy on her when Shaw couldn’t. Or when she got distracted.

She angrily packed her gear away and found the keys to the apartment, locking up after leaving the dead body in the bedroom.  
She would have to wait for her target back at the apartment.


	3. Red Lips and Flushed Cheeks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _To let yourself go, is to burn with desire and never look back._  
>  ~ R.M. Drake

They had gotten no new leads on the Black Widow case within the past week and Root was starting to get frustrated. She rubbed the back of her neck as she forced herself up the last of the steps, spotting her new neighbour struggling with shopping bags whilst trying to open the door.

The woman – Shaw – smiled at her and tried to wave but the bags in her hand prevented the movement.

“Do you need some help?” Root asked as she reached her own door.

“I swear, how much easier would it be if we had more than two hands?” Shaw responded with another smile, “But I’m okay, see you tomorrow.”

Shaw managed to open the door and left Root with a smile plastered on her lips.  
There was something about that woman...  
Root chewed at her bottom lip; she would be lying if she said their first meeting hadn’t been playing on her mind.

Why didn’t she ask where Shaw was from? Why couldn’t she be more approachable?  
Why was her mind fixated on that one conversation?

She would need to do some recon on that woman.  
She tutted at herself; she was being too paranoid.  
This Shaw woman was just someone who moved into the apartment complex, nothing more. She wasn’t a terrorist or a threat in general. She was just a woman. A beautiful yet mysterious woman. They had been flirting throughout the past week, though it was mostly Root doing all the work. Shaw didn't seem particularly opposed to it, though. She shook her head; unless Shaw made a move, she wouldn't do anything. Not until she knew it was mutual.

Root got into her apartment, intent on finishing the new John Grisham book she’d borrowed from Martine a month ago.  
Hours later, she heard the beeping of a smoke alarm. She wrapped a satin robe around her body and, tensely, she glanced out of her window to see a toaster hanging out of the window, held by her grumbling neighbour.

“Hey!” Root called her, trying to ignore the urge to cough at the smoke blowing her way. She tried not to think back to her nightmares.

There was a shuffling before Shaw also stuck her head of the window, almost sighing when she spotted Root.

“Kitchen troubles?” Root asked and she could see Shaw trying not to roll her eyes.

“Yeah, kitchen troubles,” Shaw answered, shrugging her shoulders, “I’m gonna order in, I think.”

“Nonsense,” came Root’s reply, “I’ve got far too much steak. Come on,” Root raised her eyebrow to anticipate Shaw’s refusal.

But she heard Shaw’s stomach rumble as she simpered away from Root’s soft chuckle. Shaw nodded at her, getting a wide smile in return.

Root tightened her robe around herself and with a quick glance in the mirror declared herself presentable enough. She didn’t know why she wanted to impress this woman.

A moment later she heard a knock at the door and took in the sight of Shaw. She had a leather jacket over a very low-cut tank top, paired with dark jeans. She looked badass, for lack of a better word.

She brought her eyes back up to Shaw’s face, noticing her gaze lingering on her exposed calves.

“See something you like?” Root asked, a teasing smile pulling at her lips.

Shaw gave her a tight-lipped smile in return and looked into her room, “Yeah, you said something about steak?”

Root’s grin only got wider at the fact that Shaw was pretending she hadn’t just been caught gaping. She turned on her heel and ignored the burning on her skin where she felt Shaw’s eyes on her back.

“So, where did you say you were from again?” Root asked as she busied herself in the kitchen.

She felt Shaw follow her like a lost puppy and found it oddly adorable, “Miami. I moved here for a job.”

“Oh, where do you work?” Root rubbed the steak with salt and pepper.

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’m a curator there, I started a couple days ago.” Shaw answered, finding the plates and cutlery easily.

It was almost as if she had been in the apartment before.

“What about you, what do you do?” Shaw asked her as she put the steak on the pan with a clove of garlic for flavour.

It sizzled deliciously and Root could feel Shaw’s eyes watching it sear carefully.

“I just work for the government, boring stuff.” Root flipped her hand dismissively and distracted the woman as she turned the meat around, “Sit down, it’s almost ready.”

Shaw listened obediently and perched on the sofa, her posture tense, as if she was going to run at any second. Root frowned at that but cut up the meat and plated it with a handful of salad.

Grabbing two beers, she sat next to Shaw on the sofa and they ate in silence.

As they ate, Root wondered if this constituted as a date. She wouldn’t mind taking Shaw out for a real date, she decided.  
She observed Shaw devouring the steak, not touching the salad.

“Thanks for this,” Shaw said after she finished.

“It’s nothing,” Root said. She noticed a speck of food on the edge of Shaw’s lip and wiped it off with her thumb, revelling in the look of shock on the smaller woman’s features.  
Something clicked in Shaw’s now obsidian eyes and Root bit her lip in anticipation.

 

* * *

 

Shaw closed the distance between them and pushed her surprised target so she lay back on the sofa. Shaw attached her mouth to the target’s and moved with precision, drowning in the taste of the steak from the other woman’s mouth.  
Shaw felt her grip her forearms with a vice-like intensity and Shaw growled from somewhere deep inside her chest.

She grabbed the target’s hands and pinned them above her head. She smiled and Shaw paused.

Shaw observed the arousal in the taller woman’s eyes, at the mirth swirling dangerously inside them.  
It filled her with a sense of pride – the position, where Shaw was laying on top of the target, restraining her hands – the position pleased Shaw immensely. If she wanted, she could kill her here and now. She could snap her neck and be done with it.

But she didn’t. Those weren’t her orders. Her orders were to observe. So, she did.

She observed the reaction when she reached out and wrapped her hand around her target’s neck. She could feel her pulse quicken, maybe from excitement, maybe from fear. Shaw didn’t care.  
She was _hers_. She could do anything to her right here and right now, the thought made Shaw bite down on the target’s bottom lip until she drew blood.

She pulled back and stared at her the woman’s flushed cheeks, at the small bead of blood ruining her perfect mouth. Shaw snaked her tongue out to lick it off.

Her target’s eyes darkened with something strange, something like desire Shaw decided, and the Red Room agent leaned back only to take off Root’s satin robe, leaving her in a vest and black panties. No bra.

“Shall we take this to the bedroom?” Root asked but Shaw couldn’t hear anything but the blood pumping in her ears.

Something was happening. She wanted her target. She wanted to feel her fighting – _really_ fighting – for her life. But she also wanted to hear her gasp and moan and be the cause of that pleasure.  
It was okay. She wasn’t going off mission. This was still just observation. If Ivan told her to kill her target, then she would. Simple as that.

It had been a week since they met, and Shaw still hadn't gotten past casual greetings and possible flirting from the target (Shaw wasn't good at spotting these things). This was best for the mission. Seducing her target wouldn't change her ultimate objective. Shaw decided to enjoy herself for a while. At least until she would inevitably be brought back to her senses.

Root looked at her strangely, this time it wasn’t desire, maybe fascination, and then slid a hand through Shaw’s hair, gripping it hard.  
Shaw clenched her jaw at the sensation, feeling the urgency in her touch.

“You like that, don’t you,” her target said with a heavy chuckle.

“Shut up,” Shaw responded and all thoughts about the innocent façade she was supposed to be upholding vanished and made way for desire.

A desire that should have been beaten out of her a long time ago.

Shaw grabbed her target by the waist and pulled her on to her lap, hearing a gasp escape from her lips. She allowed Root to place her hands either side of her face as they continued to kiss with an ever-growing desire. It was messy and hot and teeth scraped and bit until Shaw was certain of the warmth in her lower belly.  
Root rid herself of her top and Shaw couldn’t help the look of awe that overtook her features. The female form was better than that of a man. More delectable. More... beautiful.

Shaw shrugged off her jacket to get more comfortable and put a firm hand on her target’s back to bring her close enough to sink her teeth into the skin on her collarbone, her hands running up Root's smooth back but... There was a scar going across her back? Shaw couldn't be certain. She ignored it and licked Root's neck where she'd planted a bite.

“Don’t stop,” her target breathed.

Silly. She wasn’t going to stop now, not when Root looked so ravishing. But she pulled back to stare into her target’s eyes to make sure, “Do you want this?”

Root nodded enthusiastically as she bit down on her own lip, “Yes.”

That’s all she needed to hear. Shaw hooked her arms around the target’s back and carried her to the nearest wall; it wasn’t far in this small apartment and Root had slammed her head back on the wall in no time as Shaw bit and sucked a path down to her breasts, her legs wrapped securely around Shaw's waist.  
She enveloped a nipple into her warm mouth and Shaw felt herself drowning in the whimpers and sighs, sounds indifferent to if she was killing her instead. Shaw nearly groaned in appreciation when Root’s fingers dug into her scalp.

Root rolled her hips and Shaw smirked, pulling at the nipple with her teeth, “Impatient,” Shaw observed.

Because that’s what her mission was. To observe.

“I need more,” Root breathed out, raking her nails hard down Shaw’s still-clothed back.

Shaw raised her eyebrow at the audacity. Root wasn’t in control of this, _she_ was.

“Please,” Root mewled and Shaw smirked, glad to have the power back.

Shaw relented and pushed her fingers under the panties, feeling the wetness almost immediately.

“You’re awfully wet,” Shaw murmured against Root’s neck, where she planted another bite.

She gathered up the ample wetness and stroked her target’s clit with a deliberate precision.  
Arousal flooded all over her own skin as she pinched Root’s clit, making her arch into her, head thrown back against the wall. The Red Room hadn't taught her this, they only taught how to pleasure men. Shaw was operating on her own. She was going in blind.

“Yes...” Root moaned as she entered her with two fingers.

Shaw watched the reaction through a glass window. It was an almost detached feeling of rebelliousness; she was making the enemy feel good. It wasn’t exactly against her mission, yet it felt like a sin, nonetheless.

Root clung on to her shoulders and tightened her grip in Shaw’s hair, bringing Shaw back to the realisation that this was happening, that this was real.

Shaw admired the sight of kiss-swollen lips, the measured breaths, the wave after wave of moisture and pleasure rippling through the target’s body.

Shaw pushed her fingers deep and allowed Root to fuck herself on her fingers, the hand in her hair pushing Shaw’s head down to her nipples again where she obediently sucked and bit until her target’s body tensed in her arms.  
Shaw could feel the orgasm building and moved her mouth to cover Root’s, swallowing the squeal of surprise as the position changed, making Shaw’s fingers go deeper. She mapped out her cunt and found it in herself to go faster and harder.

“Do you like that?” Shaw asked against her lips, making Root nod in affirmation.

 _Good_ , she thought. At least she was doing it right.

Root began to shake in her arms with mutters of her name mixed with curses running off her tongue and Shaw leaned back to sear this moment into her memory – the moment where she broke her enemy.  
Her target’s pretty nipples stood pert, her chest flushed a mouth-watering red, the sight of those stomach muscles that she hadn’t paid enough attention to tensing. Shaw wanted to engrain it all in her mind.

As the last tremors shook through Root, Shaw slowly removed her fingers, stroking Root’s collarbone with wet fingers.

Eventually, Root unwrapped her legs from her waist, struggling to stand up straight.

This was a bad idea. Shaw stood panicked as Root looked dazedly into her eyes.  
She shouldn’t have let her guard down like this. The mission. Shaw had to remember the mission.

“Round 2 in the bedroom, sweetie?” Root asked as she twirled Shaw’s hair around her fingers.

Shaw tried to remove the shocked expression from her face and closed her slack jaw to a clench, “I have work in the morning.”

With that, she left her confused and flustered target wondering what the hell just happened. Shaw wasn’t exactly certain herself.

 


	4. Scarlet Smoulder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper._  
>  ~ T.S. Elliot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k5y5juE6ejs <\-- if y'all wanna see Zach in action

Root’s tired mind processed the events of the night again as she stood at the barre.  
She was doing ballet, an activity she did to clear her mind, trying to break in her new shoes. She pranced on one foot first, and then the other, feeling her calves burn with the familiar exertion.

She joined her partner in the middle of the room and sighed with comfort when the first notes of Tchaikovsky’s Pas de Deux echoed through the room.  
Her partner moved with her, as he had done for years, and she revelled in the familiarity and companionship.

Her mother used to tell her stories about the Bolshoi Theatre in Russia. Her Papa said he would take her there.  
_Did he?_

Root couldn’t remember much of her parents. But that memory was strong. She didn’t know why. Her Papa _had_ to have taken her there once, she could remember the steps so vividly now.

After they had completed their routine, she copied her partner's movements and keeled over, resting her hands on her knees as she caught her breath, for appearance’s sake. She’d been doing that particular routine for more than a decade, she knew that from muscle memory alone, even if her hazy mind wouldn't confirm it.  
Her partner, Zachary, gave her a boyish grin as he offered her a bottle of water, which she gratefully took.

“What’s wrong, Root?” Zach asked as he eyed her with genuine curiosity.

“Why does something have to be wrong?” Root asked with a raised eyebrow, wondering how she was a secret government agent when she wore her heart on her sleeve.

“You were particularly tense going into that last jump,” Zach commented, tucking his long curly hair behind his ears. He continued with a teasing smile, “Did someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed?”

Root smiled flirtingly back at him, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Yes, spare me no details,” Zach replied, a serious look on his face until he broke out into a grin.

“My neighbour and I...” Root trailed off suggestively and Zach raised his eyebrows in understanding.

“Is she hot and sane? If she is, tell her to call me.”

Root pondered the thought. Shaw was undoubtedly hot. But there had been something strange about the sex.  
Something that made Root’s face flush when she thought about it. The oddly innocent smiles from their first meeting felt worlds different to the intense looks Shaw was giving her that night. It was like there were two sides to her personality; Root couldn’t deny she was insanely attracted to both, though. Shaw was a mystery, and she wanted to be the one to figure her out. 

“You’re blushing like crazy!” Zach commented, forcing out of her confused trance.

“Oh, hush,” Root said, trying to hide her blush as she packed her stuff away.

“What’s her name?”

“Shaw.” Root answered with a small smile.

“You sound smitten already, damn. I hope she’s worth it.” Zach said as he shouldered his bag.

He waited for Root and she walked him to his campus building, “I mean, the sex was _hot_ , but... I don’t know. What if it was only a one-time thing?”

“Go to her work and surprise her with lunch. And then bang her straight. Or gay. Whatever.” Zach said before he leaned down and kissed her cheek, “I gotta go class. See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Root nodded and waved back at him.

She wasn’t going to follow the advice of a literal teenager, not advice about her love life.

 

That’s how she found herself outside the doors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art cradling a bunch of tiger lilies. _I dare you to love me_. The old quote from that movie Root watched an age ago seemed oddly relevant now, though she didn’t expect Shaw to fall in love with her.  
It was just sex. Nothing more.

They were just satisfying each other. Or rather Shaw was satisfying her, Root hadn’t yet gotten the chance to return the favor.

Root briefly wondered what her parents would say about Shaw. Would they swoon? Would they slap her for corrupting their sweet daughter? Her Papa would like her, she decided. Her Papa was always good, always kind.  
Root wondered if her parents were even alive.  
Probably not. Otherwise they would have at least _tried_ to find her. Right?

Root rounded the corner into the Roman section and had to pause and collect her thoughts.

Shaw was wearing black slacks (undoubtedly tailored) that clung to her ass perfectly. The top two buttons of her red blouse were popped open and Root was finding it hard not to stare at her cleavage.

“The myth of Romulus and Remus has been twisted so much in history. Livy, for instance, is a prominent historian who commented on the story of the creation of Rome.” Shaw spoke to a bunch of high schoolers who hung on her every word, much like Root.

Root smiled at how lost Shaw got in the history; it was no wonder she got the job here.  
The kids were rapt as they listened to the story.

Root strolled to join in with the crowd as they looked at the statue, but she looked at the beautiful woman in front of the statue.  
Suddenly, Shaw turned and met her eye. There was a flash of something akin to panic in her eye and Root wondered if this was the wrong thing to do. Damn Zach and his teenage plans.

But then Shaw smiled at her, the innocent smile she used when they first met, and gave her a small wave.

Root waved back and held up the flowers.

“I will leave you all to carry on the tour on your own. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate.” Shaw addressed the kids before smiling back at Root.

The taller woman weaved through the crowd and presented the flowers, “I have a question – when do I get to return the favour?”

“Uh...” Shaw looked shocked for a moment but laughed it off as she clutched the bouquet, smelling the subtle aroma, “I didn’t think you’d show up at my work.”

“I understand the whole rule about not touching the masterpieces but I thought they’d make an exception.” Root winked with a smile.

“Don’t get cute,” Shaw said in an innocent tone, but her eyes were anything but.

Root rose to the challenge, “Or what?”

Shaw stepped closer, brushing an errant curl behind Root’s ear before she whispered, “Or else we’ll have to repeat last night.”

“With or without the burning toaster?”

“Root, I swear...” Shaw narrowed her eyes and Root couldn't help but laugh. She looked like an angry puppy.

“Would you like to go to the block party together? They throw one every year, same time.” Root chewed her bottom lip. It was a risk, but Shaw seemed worth it. It would be nice to say she was Root’s date, too.

Shaw looked worried or scared or _something_ for a moment but the emotion was gone with a blink, “Of course.”

 

* * *

 

This didn’t constitute as messing up her mission. She was just maintaining her cover.

It did come as a bit of a shock when Root showed up at her workplace a couple days ago but she supposed that’s what people did the morning after.  
Shaw didn’t know, she’d never stuck around long enough to find out, even during a mission. It was usually sleep with the target and then kill them.  
This waiting... It was new to Shaw.

But she was quick to adapt.

She pulled down the tight dress so it covered at least half of her thighs.  
She smeared some crimson lipstick on and slipped on her heels.

It would have to do.

She rapped her knuckles on the target’s door and it swung open. Root looked ravishing. Her target’s dress had a plunging neckline, showing a taste of those stomach muscles Shaw knew she should have paid more attention to. It drew her eyeline lower, until all she had in her mind was a need to touch.

What did this mean? Was Shaw breaking? She was becoming sharp edges and broken shards but she couldn’t bring herself to piece back together.  
No. She was made of marble. She wouldn’t break.

She put on a smile, “Ready to go?”

“Yeah, quick warning – Zoe is a huge flirt and John works with me so he’ll try to embarrass me.” Root said as she linked their arms together.

The block party was hosted in John Reese’s apartment and it flowed out into the stairwell. They could hear the chatting and laughing as they climbed the stairs. A soft music drifted down the stairs, inviting them up.

Shaw was hyperaware of Root’s hand on the small of her back and she ignored the churning feeling in her stomach, blaming it on nerves, though she knew she didn’t have that feeling. Couldn’t have that feeling.

“You made it!” A tall man greeted them at the door. He held out two champagne flutes for them and then leaned close to Root to whisper to her conspiratorially, “I see you bought a date.”

“Brought,” Shaw corrected his wording but not the assumption that she was Root’s date. She didn’t know why, “Shaw.”

“Reese,” he replied with a tense smile. It looked unnatural on him, strained almost.

It might be because he was like her. He didn’t show his emotions, if he even had any. Ivan had chosen a good one to be her contact, she decided.

Zoe, it appeared, was the personification of sex on a stick, radiating just enough sex appeal to make Shaw regret going to this thing with a date.

But then Root leaned down to whisper in her ear, “If we make it out alive, I have a bottle of whisky begging to be opened.”

Shaw nodded at the information. So, Root did still want to see her. At least she hadn’t completely screwed up the mission when she screwed her target. She'd done more research on women having sex, so was more confident in her abilities; she'd always been a quick learner.

“Let’s dance,” Root declared, pulling her into the center of the room after taking the champagne from her grasp.

“My dancing is terrible,” Shaw said but she wound her arms around the taller woman’s neck.

“Oh sweetie, it can’t be worse than your cooking,” Root joked, earning a grumble from her companion.

The music was slow, Shaw found she didn’t mind swaying along with the melody. Not when she was wrapped in Root’s long arms. Not when Root was looking at her like _that_. Like she had hung the stars.  
Root’s gaze was strong; her features devastatingly beautiful, even when a hair escaped from her plait and framed her face.  
Shaw reached out to touch the errant curl, scared of breaking this mirage. 

They danced slow, forgetting there were people beyond themselves.  
Shaw’s eyes glanced down at those lips – so red, so deadly – and thought about how easy it would be to tilt her head upwards and capture them in a kiss. Curiousity. Purely hypothetical.

“What's on your mind, sweetie?” Root asked, but it was barely a whisper.

“You.” It wasn't a lie. Root  _was_ on her mind, “What am I doing?” She thought aloud.

“Having fun.” There was a hopeful gleam in Root's eye. 

So it wasn't binding. It didn't mean a thing. They weren't in a relationship because Shaw didn't care for Root. Root was her target, nothing more. Root didn't seem like she wanted a relationship, that was good.

“You are having fun, aren't you?”

Shaw didn't know how to answer. The shackles that bound her emotions were deteriorating. But they were made of thoughts. Shaw was made of marble. She wasn't going to break.

Root moved her hand from its previous position on her waist to lay her palm heavily on the crook of Shaw’s neck.  
Shaw looked up at her then, just staring into her eyes. Curiosity. That’s what it was.

If she noticed how angular Root's jaw looked in this light, how her eyes  _\- oh_ her eyes, more hypnotic, more dangerous than before - kept flitting down to Shaw's lips, she didn't comment.

They locked eyes and Shaw never wanted to look away. So she didn't.

She didn't concede, didn't back away from the intensity of Root's stare.

“You know, there's something special about you. I can't put my finger on it,” Root commented, still not daring to look away.

Of course she was special. She was an assassin. She would be  _Root's_ assassin. 

She swallowed the  _thing_ that had caught in her throat. She wouldn't call it emotion. No. It wasn't emotion.

When the song ended, Root was still holding her, still looking at her with those same _goddamn_ eyes. It was making her angry. The Red Room was failing.  
Shaw let the warmth in her chest linger for a moment before she broke all contact and stepped back, declaring a need for booze.

She stood in a silent companionship with Reese for the rest of the time they were at the party while Root socialized. Shaw wouldn’t admit it but she couldn’t keep her eyes off her target. But she assumed that was a good thing. That just meant she was doing her mission. Nothing more.

 

* * *

 

“I need you, now,” Root breathed as she was pressed against the door of Shaw’s room.

They had left the party early, Shaw didn’t see the value in it anyway.

Root put her hands on her waist to bring their lips together in a hungry kiss, filled with a need Shaw was confused by. She shouldn’t let her guard down so easily.  
But Root ran her tongue across her lips, parting them until they were dancing in a synchronicity, like earlier, that really shouldn’t have existed. They had barely met a fortnight ago. Root was her target.  
It shouldn’t feel so damn good.

Shaw reached for the zipper but when Root nipped at her bottom lip she got a little distracted.

“Where’s the damn zipper?” Shaw murmured against Root’s lips, grinning triumphantly as she found the zipper, rushing to yank it down.

Shaw swallowed down the urge to mark her target as she ran her eyes up Root’s body, taking in the black lingerie, a stark contrast to the pale skin on offer.

She stared at lace covered breasts and Root hummed at the attention.

“You can touch, you know?” Root said teasingly.

Shaw felt her pulse throb between her own legs but bit down on Root’s neck to hide the emotion. This was need. This was desire. The Red Room had failed.  
Shaw surged forward to capture Root’s lips in another kiss, their tongues battling for dominance until Root eventually gave in.  
Weak. Shaw was stronger than her.

Shaw took off her own dress, allowing it to pool at her feet before unclasping the taller woman’s bra.

“You’re beautiful,” Root commented as she stared at her skin.

Shaw paused, realizing this was the first time Root had seen her, all of her; it was dark, she wouldn’t be able to see the scars. It was okay.

Shaw pushed her more securely against the door, wrapping her hand around Root’s neck. She heard the other woman gasp and swallowed it with another kiss.

Root’s fingers trailed down her back and Shaw pressed her hands back against the door, holding them at her sides. Root would have been able to feel the scars left after the Red Room had beaten her.

She shouldn’t be thinking about them. Not when she had her target squirming in front of her.

Shaw lavished her breasts with attention as she slipped a hand down Root’s stomach, finally getting to feel those stomach muscles quiver and tense under her fingers.  
Root groaned in frustration when Shaw skipped her underwear and stroked down her inner thigh instead. She moved with purpose, with precision, to gradually but teasingly come closer to where Root wanted her. Where Root needed her.

Shaw knelt in front of her, hooking her fingers around the offending underwear until Root was completely naked in front of her.

Root spread her legs and the heavy scent of arousal flooded Shaw’s senses until it was all her mind was on.  
After spreading her open, Shaw licked an experimental trail from her center to her clit. The taste was nice, she decided. Not entirely unpleasant. Different to the taste of men, sweeter even.  
She decided she liked the taste. She dove in for more.

“Fuck, Shaw,” Root moaned, stifling another groan by placing a hand over her own mouth, the other wound in Shaw’s hair, anchoring her in place.

She rolled her hips to grind herself against Shaw’s tongue. It wouldn’t take much more to make her cum.  
She was just maintaining a cover.  
This is what people did. People in... People in a relationship or whatever the hell they were doing right now.

Shaw hooked one of Root’s legs over her shoulder and fucked her with her tongue, a hand on her hip to stop the bucking hips, but it didn’t work. Root was too far gone and Shaw was too focused on making her cum. Her hands reached up to scratch at Root's strong, smooth back until she met the scar again. 

“Sameen...”

It was the use of her first name that broke the strange trance she’d been in all night.  
She felt claustrophobic, as if someone was tightening a noose around her neck.  
Her chest felt heavy with something she didn’t dare name. It couldn’t be true. No. The Red Room... They had rid her of such emotions.  
Shaw stepped back from the target to put some space between them.

The Red Room hadn’t failed. _She_ was failing.

She wiped the taste of Root off her mouth, ignoring her whimper, “You need to go.” The spell had broken, Shaw needed space to breathe. Root was suffocating her without even touching her. Her target was skilled.

“Shaw, I-” Root swallowed her words and she could see the taller woman struggling to keep her composure as she tried to regulate her breathing again, “What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing, I...” She sighed, frustrated, “I don’t think I can do this. I need you to go. Please.”

“If that’s really what you want.” Root looked dejected as she pulled up her dress.

She had reached the door before something made Shaw call out, “Root, wait.”

She waited but Shaw didn’t continue. She didn’t know what to say, or if she should say anything at all.  
She was failing her mission. If Ivan asked her to kill Root now she would, but then who would that make her?  
Just a brainwashed little _suka_ who still had to cuff her wrist to the headboard to sleep.  
Her life belonged to Ivan, to the Red Room, to HYDRA. She was no one more. She was nothing. She didn’t have feelings.

It would be better to detach herself from her target now, sooner rather than later.

Root offered her a small, shy smile in reassurance, “Goodbye, sweetie.”

Sooner rather than later.

She licked her lips, as to wipe away the sensation she had seared into her mind, but she couldn't overcome it.

When Ivan called to check up tomorrow morning, she wouldn't tell him about tonight, there was no need. He didn't need to know about her failures or inadequacies.

She pressed her eyes shut. If she could hear her target crying in the night, she didn’t react.

Shaw reached underneath herself and ran her fingers along the scar at the bottom of her back.

It felt the same as Root's.

The older blonde ballerina flitted through her mind again.

Strange. Definitely... strange.


	5. Red Alert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple._  
>  ~ Oscar Wilde

Root rubbed gloved hands up and down her arms as the snow fell around them. The vehicle shook as they were steered across snowy roads.  
S.H.I.E.L.D. finally tracked down a record of the sale of little girls to the Red Room. The lead computer guy had traced the money to somewhere in Germany – Finow.

She, Martine, and a bunch of other Level 9s had been sent in to raid the base. She hoped they were right; the information had taken nearly two weeks to get, and they didn’t even know if it was accurate. She had asked Reese to watch her apartment, since he lived a couple floors up anyway and it wasn’t too much to ask; he was a Level 9 too, though he hadn’t been sent out on many missions recently. Something about working on himself for a while. Whatever, point was that Reese knew where she was and how long she would be gone for. If Shaw wanted to know, she could ask him.

Root bounced her knee in the backseat and Martine threw her a confused glance.

“Rough night?” Martine asked as she reassembled her gun after cleaning it at least a dozen times.

“You could say that,” Root gave her a tense smile, wanting the conversation to be over, but Martine obviously had other ideas.

“Well, you look like a mess,” Martine grinned teasingly, “Who was it this time? Romanoff? That woman you’ve been fawning over for the last few weeks – what’s her name? Scott?”

“Her name is Shaw and I have _not_ been fawning over her,” Root narrowed her eyes at her partner.

Shaw flooded back into her mind – that was a lie, she never actually _left_ Root’s mind nowadays – and she blew on to her gloved hands. There was something... she didn’t know.

It was like Shaw was broken into two – intelligent, smiley museum curator, and insanely hot ex-bed partner. Emphasis on insane.  
No, that was unfair, she wasn’t insane. It was just a little strange what happened last night.

A selfish part of Root hoped this wouldn’t change anything, that she would go back home in a day and find Shaw there on her bed waiting to pleasure her.

Martine gasped in surprise, “Are you in love? Someone play a goddamn John Legend song, Root’s in love,” she singsonged to the rest of the truck, who ignored her like they were trained to do. The relative professional silence stopped Root from slapping her there and then.

“Can we focus on the mission? Please?” Root shook herself out of it when the vehicle came to a stop outside a snow-covered wood.

“If you admit you’re in love, we can focus on the mission.”

“Stop teasing me, that’s an order,” Root huffed; she’d never liked Martine, “They’ll have guards at the front. If we go through the woods and enter from the south entrance, there’ll be less guards to take out.” Root said, earning a collective nod from the team.

They approached a wire fence almost immediately after exiting the car. It looked old, old enough that it gave way under the butt of a machine gun, though Root and another agent still pried it aside with some difficulty.  
They ducked under the fence, into enemy territory.

Martine went into the grounds first before she halted, hiding behind a tree. Root caught up to her and they moved in twos to the pale building. It looked big enough to be a school.

It was strange but, as the snow pounded against her face and she crunched in the direction of the base, she was transported back to a place she wasn’t sure was from her own memory.

The memory was of a young blonde girl, of a man with greying hair and steely blue eyes. It was a memory of a world without hope.

Root frowned.

_The trees towered over her small figure and she held her pocket knife tighter in her shaking hands. The silence around her was deafening. Oppressive._

_She did what was expected of her. What she was made to do._

_She could feel the stares of two adults (her mind strained for names) on her back but she didn’t dare turn to them._

_The scent of snow and blood assaulted her nostrils and Root could feel her skin crawling as she looked down at Katya’s dead body._

_Katya was too weak for the program. There was too much light in Katya’s eyes, too much emotion. She smiled too much, cared too much._  
_Though Root felt the same, she was better at concealing it. Katya was not. She was too weak._

_It was her or Katya._

Root frowned again but cradled the weapon and hacked the lock on the door from the back entrance with the rest of the team.

They silently stepped down the metal steps.  
Root made them stop with a clench of her hand.

There were cameras.

How did she know that?

Sure enough, as they rounded the corner, a wall completely covered in monitors and screens showed the feeds from at least a dozen cameras.  
None covered the back, though. Root knew that.

Why did she know that?

They rounded the corner, two agents splitting off to monitor them from the cameras.

They wandered through the corridors, guns at the ready.  
The room they stumbled across made Root’s chest tighten with fear; it was what looked like a bedroom, with rows of beds lined up next to each other. But that wasn’t the chilling part, no, there were handcuffs on the bedposts.  
She touched the bed closest to her, closing her eyes. She could imagine perfectly how the children must have felt in the Red Room. Strangely, shockingly, Root thought she remembered a smaller girl crying as she leaned her back on the bed.  
_Stop crying_ , she said in her mind. They wouldn’t like it if they were crying.  
But when Root opened her eyes again, Martine was looking at her sympathetically. That’s when she realized she’d sat down on the bed, grasping at the crisp white bedsheets as she steadied herself.  
She stood back up and a sign on a column in the middle of the room caught her eye.

**Health Rules:**

  1. **Exercise**
  2. **Fresh air**
  3. **Personal cleanliness**
  4. **Rest and sleep**
  5. **Correct posture**
  6. **Rid body of waste**
  7. **Proper diet**



She straightened her posture and continued to move down to the lower levels.  
They passed cells, which looked as if they were from an old prison, though Root tried to ignore the scratch marks on the sides of the barred window, like the kids were driven insane trying to escape.

They didn’t encounter many guards, only two outside a steel door at the end of the corridor of cells.  
Martine threw the flash grenade and shot them.  
Reaching the large steel door, Root clenched her jaw to stop the thoughts coming back to her. She had been here before, she was sure of it.  
Déjà vu. It had to be.

But Root remembered walking these hallways – everything was the same, from the glassy white tiles on the floor, to the whitewashed walls, to the feeling of dread when she approached the steel door.

Root’s mind was becoming a haze of memories, she couldn’t understand, she couldn’t separate past and present, dreams and reality.

She closed her eyes again, frowning when a small ginger girl ran past her. She shook her head and opened her eyes. She was alone, no little ginger girls running past her, no crying girls beside beds, no dead girls in the snow outside. There was only Martine with her, two other agents behind them somewhere. She was still alone.

Something was wrong, either with the mission, or with her. She needed to think.

Martine opened the steel door fast, before Root could make her think better of it, and held her weapon in front of her, “Don’t move, let me see your hands.”

Root blinked back her emotions and doubts and followed her in a second later.

There was the man from her nightmares. His hair was grey, his posture small, like he’d shrunk into himself in his old age.  
He was leaning much of his weight on a cane and Root’s heart clenched as she remembered the sound of the cane whipping against her skin. She had only been hit once, at the start, she was always a quick learner.

“ _Doch_...” he said, looking directly at Root. _Daughter_ , that horrific word again.

She could physically feel the cane hitting her skin. She felt sick, though she didn’t show it.

“We need to go,” he said but Root raised her weapon at him in confusion.

“Stop talking,” Root commanded angrily.

What was happening to her? She felt like she was waking up into a nightmare – one with an old man she had no business recognizing.

“Sorry, I thought you were someone else,” he tapped his head with two fingers.

Root halted and swallowed down the memories. It meant _my mistake_. An old Russian gesture.  
Something flickered across his face, something like hope, but he complied. Compliance would be rewarded.

“Slowly walk towards me,” Martine instructed, obviously not noticing nor caring about the inner turmoil within Root.

Her eyes flicked down to the medal on his lapel. Order of Lenin.

She wasn’t a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. She was a Red Room agent.  
The treatments had made her forget.

It was time to serve the motherland.

Root turned and shot the two men behind her, their bodies hitting the floor with a dull thud.

She turned the gun on Martine, who had now aimed her own weapon at Root.

“Root, what the hell?” Her strained whisper hissed across the room, falling on Root’s numbed ears.

“Don’t be stupid, Martine. Put the weapon down,” Root said, her voice as strong as iron even if she didn’t want to shoot her partner. She might even have called Martine a friend if it weren’t for the constant ribbing.

The persona she’d been forced to have, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, wanted nothing more than to run back to the US, to the comfort of her own home.  
It just showed how long she’d been undercover.  
She’d been made to forget the Red Room. She had forgotten Madame B. and Ivan (yes! They were the names!) and the other girls.

Martine lowered her weapon slowly, “I’m going to put my gun down and I want you to do the same.”

Stupid. Weak. Root was stronger than her. Root was made of marble, as Madame B. used to tell her and the other recruits who made it past graduation.

She tightened her grip on her own weapon, clenching her jaw as her finger hovered over the trigger.  
There was a popping sound beside her and Root’s face contorted in horror as Martine’s bullet-ridden body moaned to the floor. She watched how Ivan flinched as the body – she can’t name her anymore, that would acknowledge the murder of her friend – dropped to the ground and was about to scream, or break down in tears, or _something_ when she turned to her side, identifying the murderer.

Shaw.

She heard a shuffling in the distance, knew that Ivan was approaching her, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away from Shaw.  
Because there was the woman Root had left in bed a mere day ago. There was the woman, so mysterious in her duality, that had Root racking her brains to find a way to impress her. There was the woman... Shaw was the Black Widow she was meant to be tracking. How did she even know Root was here?

“We should go, two other agents will be coming,” Shaw collected the weapons off the dead bodies around them in the room. She still hadn’t acknowledged Root’s presence in the room, apart from the save. Shaw turned to Ivan, “What are your orders?”

“Take me to America. I give further instructions then,” Ivan replied in broken English.

He walked with the support of his cane and he linked his arm with Shaw’s. They walked side by side, Root trailed at the back. She shot the other two agents easily. After all, what was another couple of murders to her apparently murderous conscience.

They passed many young girls of various ages. They barely got a second look since they were with Ivan.  
Ivan knew things about her past, things that Root needed to know.  
She needed to know what her real name was, who her real parents were, if the memories she had of them were real or fabricated. If she presented herself as loyal maybe she could find out.

The flight on the Quinjet was long and arduous, but Root took the time to clear her mind of what she thought she knew about herself. This was why her early memories were murky, why she had a scar on her back.  
She got up off her seat and entered the cockpit, where Shaw was busy flying the plane.

“You’re like me, another graduate,” Shaw commented as Root sat down next to her. It wasn’t a question, more like a statement. Root thought she heard a bit of admiration in her voice but, well, everything she thought she knew thus far was a lie, so she could be wrong about this too.

“Are you sure?” Root asked timidly; she still had emotions, still had a conscience, it set her apart from the other Black Widows, “Why can I feel?”

Shaw flicked something in front of her and continued to focus on the flight. The only indication that she heard Root was the small crease between her eyebrows.  
Shaw turned to look at Root with big, curious eyes, like the one’s when they first met, but this awe looked real. It looked raw.

Shaw just shook her head, “Rumors.” Root was about to ask her to elaborate when Shaw continued, “They told us about a blonde in deep cover in the US.”

Root gnawed at her bottom lip but tried to seem like the entire fabric of her reality hadn’t just crumpled in front of her like Martine’s body, leaving her with a simple question – who was she?

“I don’t know why you can feel,” Shaw continued, her eyes trained forwards again.

Root left it at that. She returned to her seat and tried not to think about how easy it would be to kill Ivan on this plane right now.  
He slept soundly in the beds at the back.  
She could snap his neck. Shaw would kill her too, but that was a price worth paying.  
A strange feeling of victory flooded through Root as she thought about the Red Room’s base in Finow being disbanded. They wouldn’t hurt any more innocent girls, not now that S.H.I.E.L.D. knew about the base.

She knew she shouldn’t have felt that way. The Red Room made her into who she was, she should be grateful.  
But the truth is, she wasn’t. They had turned her into a killer. They made her actually, physically kill people.  
They had forced her to assume an identity for so long she forgot it was a cover.

But she had a duty to serve the motherland.  
That’s what she would do.

 

* * *

 

“I love America,” Ivan said as he looked out at the skyline from Root’s window.

They had made it back to New York City. Root would have to stash Ivan in her apartment for the duration of the mission. Shaw had retired to her own room after the flight; Root needed to talk to her, find out what _rumors_ she was talking about.

“New York skyline, I hear, is best in the world,” Ivan continued, looking up wide-eyed at the buildings towering over them in the room.

“It’s like any other,” Root glanced at him curiously as she changed the covers on her bed.

Memories had started coming back to her now. When she was a recruit, Ivan didn’t speak much.  
He just looked at them as if they were food on a menu, scrutinizing them with hard eyes. This was new to her, seeing him show a actual human emotion was fascinating.

“No, no, my dear. New York is special,” Ivan said, shuffling as he turned towards her, hands firmly behind his back, “Bogart was from here, you know?”

“I didn’t,” Rot replied, not pausing her actions with the quilt cover until Ivan approached her and gripped her face.

She started for a moment but averted her eyes to the floor.

“Tomorrow is an exciting day, _dorogaya_. Be grateful, for you shall be exploding a bomb in the Hub. You will be serving the motherland.” Ivan said with cold eyes she remembered so vividly now.

He squeezed until Root’s jaw was clenched with anger.

“Yes, Master,” Root replied, a stoic expression in place as she had been taught.

It was kill or be killed. Simple as that.


	6. Rose-tinted Glasses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act._  
>  ~ George Orwell

The Hub felt eerily quiet, Root’s footsteps echoed through the whitewashed room. Blank monitors framed the walls in the room she was in and she tried hard to ignore the traitorous feeling of dread seeping its way into her mind.  
The sky outside was bright, the early summer sun had begun to emerge but the cool New York breeze helped to alleviate the sweat that had overcome Root’s body.

She wished there were other agents there too. She wished she hadn’t had to climb the floors manually after they shut down all the computers and elevators and all other technology. She wished she could just blend into a group of agents.  
They had disabled all the cameras; all the agents had been sent out of the Hub by a more senior HYDRA sleeper agent within S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Sitwell, Root believed.

She was alone, though.  
Like she was trained to be.

She itched to run, to just forget this whole damn mission and run away with Shaw. They could survive on their own; with their skills, they could last a couple months.  
That’s _if_ Shaw wanted to come with her.

Root still didn’t know where they stood. It was fun while it lasted. But Shaw was too much of a soldier to leave with her.

Root had a life - one of the stupid ones where she would say hi to neighbours, go out to parties when she wanted to, where she could love whomever she pleased. She wanted that again.

The bomb in her shoulder bag felt heavy – she was going to murder her friends, her co-workers. She was going to descend into the darkness like she was engineered to do.  
And all for a man who used to beat her and brainwash her.

She had a duty. She was nothing. She belonged to HYDRA, to the Red Room. She was nothing more.

Root carefully extracted the bomb from her bag and placed it in the bathroom on the first floor with shaky hands. It was set to go off in 16 hours. It would catch the agents off guard at the end of their shift.

A voice in Root’s mind wondered if the cleaning crew would find it in the morning. She wouldn’t mind that.  
She extracted a tile from the wall and chiseled a brick out. She replaced the brick with the bomb and covered it with the tile again.

She contemplated for a moment but put the tile on loosely. It would be enough. They would find it. They had to.  
Root wondered whether she would get punished for not completing her mission. Maybe it was time to start determining her own missions.  
Maybe it was time to cut ties with the Red Room once and for all.

They would come after her.  
_Let them,_ she thought with a sneer. She was a survivor. She would beat everything they would send at her. 

Rose-tinted glasses. That’s what her mother used to say. That she was an optimist, that she had an unbridled positive view on the world.  
Oh, if she knew where Root was now.

She exited the Hub and tried not to let the apprehension impact her mission.  
She got back to her cover’s apartment but stopped when she saw Shaw sitting in front of her own.

“Ivan’s asleep in your room, I didn’t think you’d want to disturb him,” Shaw said as she held up a couple bottles of beer.

“Is this your way of saying I should stay with you?” Root’s eyebrow quirked up as she teased.

“Yes,” came the reply.

Root grinned and took the beer, pulling Shaw up a moment later.  
To her surprise, Shaw didn’t drop her hand and pulled her into the apartment. Root nearly laughed at how messy Shaw's room was - clothes were thrown on the floor, dirty dishes sat in the sink, wrappers of various energy bars littered the floor. After years of being told to be clean, tidy, the first thing an agent would do was break that rule. Of course she had been in here before, but her mind was a little hazy back then.

Root gulped. They needed to talk.

They would talk and Root would confess her deliberate failure of the mission. She would tell Shaw that she wasn’t strong. That she wasn’t marble. That she wasn’t good enough for the program. Shaw could do whatever she wanted with that information.

They sat on the sofa, Root’s legs folded under herself as she sipped the room-temperature beverage. It was almost as if Shaw was waiting for her.  
Like a good soldier.

They sat in silence. Root took the time to admire Shaw’s side-profile. She was beautiful.  
She wondered if the Red Room knew the genetics of each girl. Was that how they knew which to kidnap, which to steal away from their parents? Did they know how beautiful the girls they brainwashed would become?

Root couldn’t help herself when she leaned over and pressed their lips together.  
The kiss was slower than they were used to. More – dare she say – tender.

Shaw put her hand against Root’s cheek and their eyes fell closed.  
Root felt an ache go through her, craving the physical contact for so long.  
They shouldn’t be doing this. Not when their Master slept next door.

But Root no longer wanted to be affiliated with the Red Room or Ivan. She was her own person. She belonged to no one, not even the Red Room.

Shaw pulled back and shed her top, allowing Root’s gaze to heat up her skin.  
Root didn’t know if she was allowed to touch. She hadn’t touched Shaw _like that_ before.

“It’s okay,” Shaw took her hand and laid it on her bare breast.

Root hesitated, “Are you sure?”

Shaw bit her lip and promised it was okay again. She pressed a kiss to Root’s lips and then led them to the bed.  
They’d never made it to the bed before.

Shaw shucked off her trousers and Root crawled between her legs, settling her weight half-on and half-off Shaw’s body.

They kissed more languidly now, and Root felt the worry about their mission dissipate the longer they were together. Root felt safe. She wasn’t meant to feel this. It was wrong, but so right at the same time.  
Shaw clung to her shoulders as their tongues danced with each other. It was coordinated. Slow. Root wondered if Shaw’s mind was as dizzy as her own. If she could feel the same spark each time their lips met and molded into one. If her heart was racing as fast as Root’s.

Root rid herself of her clothes until they were both naked. She laid her body against Shaw’s and it felt... perfect. She wasn’t supposed to feel this way.

“Have you ever been with another woman? Before me, I mean?” Root asked, her fingers tracing Shaw’s arms as she held them uselessly at her sides.

Shaw shook her head and a pang of guilt ran through her body. She was Shaw’s first woman. And she didn’t even return the favor.  
She promised herself she wouldn’t hurt Shaw, she wanted it to be gentler than their other times.

Her hands explored tenderly, encouraged on by Shaw’s noiseless whimpers.  
Shaw’s brow was furrowed, eyes pressed shut like she didn’t want this to be happening.

“Are you okay?” Root asked, brushing raven hair away from sweaty skin. When no response came, Root pondered a thought for a moment before smiling down at the other woman, “Hang on.”

She leaned over and ruffled through the drawers.  
Just as she suspected, she found the cold metal handcuffs they used to be forced to use in the Red Room.

She looked up at Shaw’s darkening eyes and tentatively locked Shaw’s hand to the headboard.

“Is that better?” Root asked, seeing Shaw squirm against the cuffs.

It’s what she did the first time too. Her bedfellow at the time thought it was just a kink, so did Root. Until the memories came back, at least. Now Root understood. It made her feel safe. She hoped it would make Shaw feel safe too.  
Shaw nodded, biting and sucking at Root’s lips until her mind was blank again with desire.  
Shaw’s tongue caressed her skillfully and Root almost forgot this was her first time with a woman. Properly, anyway.

Root slipped a leg between Shaw’s and they moved against each other without rush.  
Root brushed her fingers across Shaw’s chest and squeezed a rosy nipple, making Shaw arch into the touch.  
Shaw moaned quietly when Root ground into her faster and Root silenced her with a quick peck to her lips. The fingers of Shaw’s unrestricted hand dug into her hips and then nails were scratching her ass until Root bit her neck.  
Shaw stilled.

“Breathe,” Root murmured against her skin, hearing Shaw take a shuddering breath in response, “Still okay?”

“Yes, now shut up,” Shaw whispered back.

Shaw thrust up against Root’s thigh and she could feel the conspicuous wetness enticing her. Their grinding became harder and faster and hotter. Shaw’s skin was sticky to the touch, she was sweating as if from rigorous physical exertion.  
Root felt herself getting wetter but she placed her hands either side of Shaw’s head. Today was about making Shaw feel good.

She couldn't tell you how much time had passed, just that it was long enough, but too quick at the same time. After weeks of waiting with baited breath for a chance to fuck Shaw, she was determined to get lost in it. She didn't focus on the time, no, she just wanted Shaw to feel good.

Shaw knew a range of different curses, Root could hear them being muttered under her breath. She wondered where she'd learnt them. She tried to imagine a younger teen version of Shaw on her first mission gathering intel on social media. It brought a smile to her features.

Shaw’s free hand dug into the small of Root’s back, raking her nails up and she was reminded of her predicament. There was no doubt in Root’s mind that there would be marks tomorrow. No matter.

Root moved against Shaw harder and the younger woman threw her head back into the pillow with a groan. Shaw canted her hips again with a sharp gasp.  
She was close.

Root reached below and rubbed tight circles on Shaw’s clit. She could see the beads of sweat breaking out across Shaw’s upper lip. She leaned down and captured the lips in a soft kiss.  
It was a promise.  
That she would be there. That she would stay with her for as long as she needed.

Shaw’s legs quivered and she threaded her free hand in Root’s hair, pulling her down for another kiss. Root swallowed Shaw’s whimpers, feeling her own body tingling and throbbing with need too. But it was Shaw’s turn today. It was her time to feel good.

Root added another finger and reverently rubbed Shaw’s clit.  
Shaw visibly clenched and Root pressed a kiss to her sweaty forehead.

Root witnessed the exact moment when the tidal wave hit, time seemed to stop for a moment, though she could still hear the quiet  _tick, tick, tick_ from the clock on the bedside table, the bustle of life outside the open window, the quiet creak from the bed in Zoe's room.

But at that specific moment, on that bed, Root felt the time stop.

Shaw breathed out a shuddering sigh as she came and Root pressed more kisses against her cheek, lips, jaw, nose, until Shaw brushed her off with a hand.

Root uncuffed Shaw’s wrist and moved to collect her clothes, but Shaw grabbed her hand.

“Stay.”

After she settled herself back down on the bed, Root bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself smiling when Shaw’s hand wrapped securely around her waist.  
She sighed and leaned back into the embrace, feeling their bodies fit together perfectly.  
It shouldn’t feel like this. She shouldn’t be feeling _anything_.

She was scared to break the silence but the night compelled her to speak.

“I'm not fearless. I'm not strong or stoic or anything we're meant to be. I am _scared_ as  _Hell,_ ” Root murmured into the pillow, her voice sounding like a church bell in the relative silence, “I don’t think I can do this.”

She felt Shaw tense and then loosen her grip on her waist. Just as fast as it happened, Shaw resumed the position again, resting her head against Root’s back, “What can’t you do?”

“Serve the motherland,” Root let out a quiet but bitter laugh, “I can’t do it.” She shouldn't be saying all this, Shaw was practically a stranger. But not really. She could trust Shaw with her life, she was certain of it.

“Go to sleep, Root,” Shaw spoke in a hushed tone.

There was silence.

“Run away with me,” Root broke it, “Between our combined skills we could last a couple months. Buy a place in Tahiti or something, get a dog, adopt a couple kids.”

The graduation ceremony had made sure they couldn't have their own, but Root wanted to prove to herself that she could look after a child, that she wasn't inherently broken by the Red Room. 

“We can’t, Root, you know that,” Shaw replied with a sigh, but Root felt her sad smile on her naked back, “We can’t escape.”

There it was, a little crack in the omnipresent armour Black Widows were taught to have, a crack which allowed her to see underneath, to see what Shaw wanted, what she desired. Root used her next words as daggers intended to make Shaw think about the situation.

“We can try,” Root tried again, resisting the urge to turn in Shaw’s arms and persuade her with a kiss.

They weren’t a couple. They didn’t give each other random kisses like that. It was just sex. Wasn’t it?

“Don’t you ever think about the future?” Root pressed on, though she wasn't sure what point she was trying to make anymore.

“What future would that be? People like us... we live on borrowed time. We either end up behind bars or in a body bag. I couldn't care less.”

“How could you say that?” Root sat up in the bed, squinting to see Shaw's frown, “The universe is filled with infinite possibilities. We can be anyone we want. I don't want to be what  _he_ made me to be.”

Shaw sighed and Root's mind was sated for the moment. She had planted that idea in Shaw's mind under the cracks in her armour. The idea that they could run away and be done with the Red Room. It was up to Shaw to decide what she'd do.

She relaxed back into Shaw's arms, confused at the tightening in her chest when Shaw kissed her shoulder. It felt too intimate.

“Sleep, we’ll figure it out in the morning,” Shaw instructed her and Root felt her eyes droop closed at the command.

Her breathing slowed but she couldn’t shake the feeling of comfort she felt wrapped in Shaw’s embrace.  
Shaw was unobtainable. She shot Martine. She was loyal to the motherland, like Root should be.

She felt the phantom of Shaw’s breath on her back and soft lips pressing feather light kisses between her shoulder blades. She wasn’t entirely sure if it was real or not.  
But Shaw’s breathing slowed and Root drifted off to sleep, feeling the weight of the day finally dissipate.  
Neither of them used the handcuffs to sleep that night.  
Something was changing. Something good, Root decided.

 

* * *

 

Shaw sat in the silence, her arm still wrapped around Root’s waist as the other woman let a peaceful sleep overtake her body.  
Shaw needed to move, though, and softly extracted her hand, careful not to wake Root’s sleeping figure.

She slipped her clothes back on.  
A more sentimental creature would have turned to look at Root as she slept in the bed.  
But Shaw was not sentimental. She didn’t care for Root, she certainly didn’t care that that the sex felt almost like love-making, or what she assumed it to feel like (maybe that’s just what it feels like to be with a woman?). It wasn't like she  _needed_ to sleep with Root. Shaw  _wanted_ to. And that scared her to no end. She could forget this feeling with a single treatment from Ivan. She needed to rectify her mistakes.  
It didn’t matter that Shaw’s chest was tight and throat was thick and every instinct inside her was saying this was a bad idea.

She cracked the door of Root’s apartment open and slipped inside. She ignored the way her hands were shaking. She wasn’t weak. She was made of marble. She wouldn’t break.

She observed the old man sleeping in Root’s bed. She could think of at least ten different ways to suck the life right out of him there and then. But she didn’t. Couldn’t.

“Master,” Shaw called him from the foot of the bed.

His frail figure looked weak, he would most likely die soon anyway. Shaw couldn’t help the strange feeling of relief at that thought.

“Master, wake up,” she called him again.

He stirred awake, blinking Shaw into focus.

“What is it?” He asked. Shaw tried to suppress the shudder at the sound of his voice and the memories it provoked.

She could run away. She could leave right now and be done with the Red Room and everything they did to her, everything they would make her do. For once in her _goddamn_ life she had a choice.

Shaw hesitated but was overcome with a sense of duty. She was nothing if not a soldier, “Root... the target is having second thoughts about the mission.”

Ivan nodded slowly, in thought, “You know what to do.”

Her hands balled up into fists.

She did. She was expected to kill Root.


	7. Red-handed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength._  
>  ~ George Orwell

Shaw flipped the kizlyar knife in her fingers as she paced outside the apartment. Her hands shook, the knife felt heavy in her hands, heavier than it should. She wiped her clammy hands on her jeans and flipped the knife again.  
It would be quick. She would walk in and slit Root’s throat as she slept.  
It would be over before she could think better of it.  
A gun would have been as effective but Shaw wanted it to be worth it. If she was taking Root’s life, then it had to be done properly.

Shaw steeled herself and lay a heavy hand on the door knob. She inhaled deeply.  
She belonged to the Red Room, to HYDRA. She was no one. She was nothing.  
She opened the door.

Her boots sounded like artillery shells on the wooden floor. The curtains had been thrown open, flooding the room in the glow of morning light.  
She twirled the kizlyar between her fingers again. She paid the churning in her stomach no attention.

She neared the bed and tried to chase away the feeling of doubt.  
It was empty.

Shaw wanted to sigh in relief but she quietened those emotions. Now was not the time for sentimentality. She needed to be a soldier. She needed to be a Black Widow.

The bathroom door opened. Her head whipped in the direction of the noise and Shaw’s stomach dropped.

Root looked startled for a moment as her eyes flicked between Shaw’s and the knife in her hand.  
She smiled in a silent acceptance and nodded at Shaw.

“Do what you have to do,” Root clenched her jaw and looked at nothing, staring at the wall behind Shaw.

Shaw couldn’t kill her. Not now. Not without a fight, at least.

She kicked Root’s stomach, sending her flailing towards the wall.  
Root groaned as her back met the surface and let herself be hit by Shaw’s punches.

Heat coursed through her veins; she became the burning fire she was pulled from all those years ago - untamable, deadly.

Shaw pulled back only long enough to bare her teeth and give an instruction, “Fight back.”

Root nodded and caught Shaw’s hand on the next punch, using her momentum to make her crash into the wall next to her.  
Shaw all but snarled at her.

Root jumped back and dodged her punches again, aiming a kick at Shaw’s stomach. It connected with a thud and Shaw couldn’t help the giddy smile on her face.  
She was fighting back. Root was fighting for her _life_.

She remembered the knife and swung at Root.  
She missed. She wasn’t trying.

Root wound up one of the tops on the floor and gave it a quick pull.  
Shaw lunged at her again, swinging the knife.

Root caught the hand in the material and kneed her in the stomach, making the knife clatter to the ground.  
Root elbowed her in the face and Shaw’s neck was wrapped in the cloth before she could react.

Her mind went cold as she struggled to breathe. She was the snow in Belarus. She was the fire in Iran. She was the marble in the Soviet Union.

She clawed at Root’s hands and pushed herself away from her grasp with a raspy cough. Root didn't fight her while she recovered. Weak.

Shaw tackled her to the ground and wrapped a hand around her target’s throat. Her target. Root was her target. She was completing her mission because she was a soldier.

The hand tightened but Shaw’s warped mind couldn’t help it when she thought back to their sex.  
A detached part of her mind wondered if her target was wet. She licked her lips at the thought but corrected herself quickly.

“Finish it,” Root managed, ignoring the tightening hand around her throat, “Cos I-I’m with you... ’til the end of the line.”

One second. That's all it would take to end Root's life. She could snap her neck and be done with her and this whole mission.

Shaw growled in frustration and punched Root’s jaw. But Root didn’t react. She took the beating until Shaw’s knuckles were bleeding and her nose was surely broken.  
Shaw looked down at her.

It was too easy. Root was so goddamn infuriating _._

They were the _same_. But they were different. That's why Root had to die. That's why she had to kill her.

Shaw was the war; she was the hitch of breath before a gunman pulled the trigger, she was the metallic taste of blood and sweat unique to a warzone, she was the cold weather being beaten away by a makeshift fire in Belarus. Root was peace. She was the ash settling after a fire. She was the warmth from a slug of whiskey in a Belarusian winter. Root was peace. She had to die.

If the roles were reversed Root would kill her too. Wouldn’t she?

“Fight, Root.” Shaw commanded again her eyes searching for something inside Root’s.

“I’m not going... to fight you anymore, Sameen.”

Shaw pulled her hand back again but hesitated. Victory was within touching distance, so why wasn't she glad?

“I hate you,” Shaw snarled, spitting the words. _For making me feel_ , she wanted to add. But she kept her mouth shut. She could see how hurt Root was and it made her stop for a moment.

She leaned back and studied Root’s face.  
There was blood everywhere, a heavy stench of sweat lingered in the air.  
The side of Root’s face was bruised purple, Shaw wondered if she looked as rough.

Shaw grimaced as she clenched her jaw, feeling the pain from her near strangulation.

If she didn't kill Root now, someone else, someone  _unworthy_ would be sent to do the job instead. Root didn't deserve that. Root deserved an execution by someone she knew, someone she may have trusted, cared for. Sentimentality was a bitch.

“I’m sorry,” Root said in a small voice. If Shaw’s eyes were in focus, she would have seen the tear roll across Root’s cheek, “I’m sorry for making you do this.”

Weak. Stupid.

But... Shaw was no stronger than her.

The thing they forget to mention in the Red Room - everything breaks eventually. Even marble.

Root's tears looked like venom as they rolled on to the floor. How did she have this emotion? This sadness? Root was like a beautiful flower, stumbling through the cracks between the pavement. Shaw was a weed. Or she was meant to be.

How had Shaw lost a grip on herself, on the mentality that had been driven into her from such a young age?

She was losing this battle.  
But she found she didn’t care enough to fight. She had fought too much today.

“Go,” Shaw replied, looking at anything but Root as she rolled off her body, “Before Ivan comes.”

Root nodded solemnly and slowly, painfully, sat up.  
Shaw rolled her eyes and shook her head, holding an arm around Root’s waist to support her.

Root was a good fighter. She could be  _useful_ to the program still. But no. Shaw didn't want her in the program any longer. It wasn't the place for Root. Root was good and pure and everything a Black Widow wasn't allowed to be.

She wondered why this was the case. Why did Root still have her feelings? She wasn't complaining, though. Root was nearly a whole person, something Shaw would never be.

“Thank you, Sam.” Root bit her lip and Shaw resisted the urge to wrap her in a hug.

She wanted to tighten her arms around Root’s broken figure, bury her nose in Root’s soft hair. She wanted to whisper her apologies and tell Root to stay. She wanted to run away and leave the Red Room in a distant memory.

But she pulled her hand back from Root’s waist and wiped at a tear that had fallen from the taller woman’s eye.

“Go,” Shaw repeated in a softer voice. She should have known that there was no such thing as an easy mission.

There were thuds in the near distance and Shaw pressed her eyes shut.

“What is going on?” A heavily accented voice bellowed in the room.

She didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. Of course it was Ivan. He had seen everything. She was dead.

 

* * *

 

Root thought fast. She grabbed the knife from the floor, willing her arms to work.  
The knife skimmed past Shaw’s head and she heard a groan.  
Shaw cracked an eye open and Root felt herself relax back on to the bed, too physically exhausted to watch the colour drain from Ivan’s cheeks.  
Root tried not to read into the look Shaw was giving her; it was a mix between shock and awe. It was something that said _what have you done?_ and _thank God you did that_ all with one look.  
But Root’s mind was too tired to process it.

She lifted her head to see Ivan collapsed on the floor. He was gargling up blood, and her eyes flicked to the knife in his throat.  
Even though she was injured, even though she nearly died, Root had good aim.

He gave Root a disbelieving look, his cane clattering on the floor next to him.

“ _Doch_ ,” he managed through a gasp.

_“Ну зачем я теперь иду?”_

_“In English, recruit.” Root’s teacher slammed the ruler down on her desk._

_Root blinked in understanding and licked her lips. Learning another language had always been interesting – learning pronunciation, understanding idioms._  
_She didn’t like it in the Red Room, though._

 _Yet, she did as she was told._  
_Cradling the arm that was hurt in training earlier in the day, she flipped to the next page of the book, tried not to let the burning stare of her teacher put her off her reading, and did as she was told._

_“Am I c-capable of that?” She read from Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, her voice still sounding accented and unnatural to her Polish ears._

_She ignored the way she stuttered over the words, how she could see her teacher approach her desk, ruler in hand, and continued, “It is... It’s a simple fantasy to amuse myself; a plaything! Yes, maybe it is plaything.”_

_The teacher wouldn’t notice if she missed a line, would she? Root was feeling the pressure of speaking in front of the class, she had barely been in the Red Room for a week._

_Before she could continue, Root felt someone grab her by the hair. She was marched out of the class by her teacher._  
_Root felt the tears welling up behind her eyes but knew that crying would be a mistake._

_She was shoved into two guards and she stumbled to stay upright._

_“Make her understand what happens when she doesn’t follow orders,” her teacher had said, before she spun on her heel and left Root alone with the men._

_Root sniffled and wiped at her wet cheeks, glaring at the men who towered above her._  
_One of them grabbed her ponytail and dragged her through white hallways but she didn’t go easily; she kicked and screamed and resisted until she felt a cold prod of something metal poke her stomach._  
_She seized on the floor, all her muscles tightening, and let out a blood-curdling scream that vibrated off the walls._

 _She was picked up off the floor as if she weighed nothing and was thrown into a single cell but the guards didn’t leave._  
_They kicked her and punched her until she was spitting up blood. At least it wasn't the cane. One of them twisted back her injured arm and she yelped in pain._  
_That was the wrong reaction._  
_She was struck again and again until she heard her rib crack._

 _But she didn’t cry anymore. Her eyes were dry. She understood this was her punishment._  
_She didn't do as she was told. At least it wasn't the cane._  
_It was her own fault._

 _She looked up and saw they were being watched. The small girl from Poland wanted to scream out for help; but the young assassin from the Red Room program knew the old man was there to watch her suffer._  
_She pressed her eyes shut and took her mind to someplace more comforting. Someplace safe._

_She tried to think of playing catch with her Papa back in Lublin, tried to remember what his face looked like before the fire. She couldn't remember. They made her forget._

_She woke up in her own bed coughing up blood and sore all over. There was a needle and thread in a dish next to her bed, accompanied by an ice cold glass of water._  
_She ripped up her only top and stitched herself back together._

She had been made into something stronger that day, something cold and ruthless and efficient.

Root felt stronger now and limped towards Ivan, blinking back tears.

“My name is Root. I am not your daughter. I belong to no one, not even the Red Room.” She levelled him with a stare, "I'm going to make sure no girl ever has to go through what we did again. Do you understand, Ivan?"

She crouched down next to Ivan and twisted the knife in his neck. It had nicked the carotid artery with the first puncture but her twisting had severed it.  
There was a spray of blood and Root’s shirt was painted in red, her hands in a similar state. The familiar liquid bled into the floor and Root tried to push the sick feeling in her stomach down.

She wondered if he took pleasure in watching her get punished that day, she wondered if he enjoyed their indoctrination.

“Your Papa... His name is Aleksander.” Ivan managed.

She didn't believe him. But of course what if he was telling the truth? Did that mean her Papa was part of the Red Room? Did it mean he was still alive?

Before she could ask Ivan, he stilled. She didn't regret not asking him. 

The door swung open and Reese took one brief look at the body before he turned to Shaw, “S.H.I.E.L.D. are here, three two-man teams at each entrance.”

“Why are they here?” Shaw asked.

Reese shrugged, “One of the agents in Finow must have called it in - every cop in New York is looking for Root and Ivan.”

Shaw put her hand on Root’s shoulder, “Are we ready to go?”

Root nodded at her.  
Root wondered what it would be like to hug Shaw, just to be wrapped in those strong arms because she could. Because there was no one pulling her strings anymore.  
But Shaw didn’t hug her. She wasn’t sentimental like that.

“Can you walk?” Shaw asked, hearing Root’s silent mewls of pain.

“I can walk; can you see?” Root replied, eyes inspecting Shaw’s neck where she could see the burn from the choking.

“I’m fine,” Shaw tried a tense smile. She turned to Reese, “Exit through the trash chute is our best bet. Are you coming?”

“I’m a merc, if you’re paying I’m coming,” Reese responded with a wink.

Root tried to ignore the innuendo but found herself smiling.

“After you, then.” Shaw muttered, stepping over Ivan’s body.

She didn’t feel remorse. Even with no one controlling her anymore, Root wouldn’t have emotions, it’s how Black Widows operated. It would make it all easier.

She briefly wondered if Shaw letting her live was a show of emotions, but dismissed it.

It was strength. It wasn’t weakness. Letting Root live was good because they were the same. They were both graduates and they should stick together.

She wondered if a part of Shaw wanted to take care of her, to nurture her back to health.  
That was the only reason Shaw was keeping her around, Root was certain of it.

She plucked the Order of Lenin badge off Ivan’s dead body and stuffed it into her back pocket. Even though she hated the man with every fibre of her being, he did make her into what she was.

Her tears had stopped. Now she felt hollow, like a chunk of her had been taken away. Her identity - first as a little Polish girl, then a Red Room agent within S.H.I.E.L.D. - it had all been stripped from her. Who was she without them identities? She wanted to find out.

They slid down the trash chute and landed in a heap at the bottom. Root ignored the stench; it was better than the smell of blood.

After avoiding the agents with skills from both the Red Room and S.H.I.E.L.D. training, they bundled in a car they’d stolen.  
The cops weren’t looking for anyone but herself and Ivan. They would find Ivan soon enough and she was huddled in the back of the car, her face buried in Shaw’s shoulder.  
No one would suspect a thing.

Shaw tapped at Root's wrist, “I planted a skin tracker on you the first time we met. With water, disinfectant and a crap-tonne of scrubbing it'll come off.”

Root nodded, “I owe you.”

“You owe me nothing.” Shaw might have smiled then, though it could have also been a grimace, Root wasn't certain.

“Take a left,” Root said after tapping Reese on the shoulder.

“Where are we going?” Reese asked.

“To a friend’s,” she said cryptically, before resuming her place on Shaw’s shoulder. Shaw was her shield from the outside world. 

Root felt Shaw thread their hands together and couldn’t help but feel the flush on her cheeks.  
She looked up at Shaw, but she was looking outside, her jaw clenched and the sun hitting her perfect skin until Root was sure she must be dreaming.

It felt like they were playing a game. A dangerous, exhilarating game that neither of them wanted to quit.

She wanted Shaw to look down at her. She wanted to decipher exactly what Shaw was feeling when Shaw didn’t know herself.  
But Root knew she wouldn’t be given the victory of decoding her emotions. Shaw couldn’t look at her. Because then she would lose whatever game they were playing.  
Shaw didn’t lose. She thought she was stronger than Root.  
But Root was made of marble.  
Marble. The Red Room. She had betrayed them.

She would have felt guilty. _Should_ have. But she saw Shaw glance down at her, their eyes meeting in a mutual understanding – they were free from those shackles. They were free and they would never go back.

She held on to Shaw's hand for a beat longer, ingraining the feeling of comfort she felt in her chest into her mind, before slipping out of the embrace. Shaw was unobtainable. She had to deal with that.

Root _had_ to deal with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used the fight scene between Dottie Underwood and Peggy Carter as the basis for the fight (ps this is my fav chapter to write so far so hope y'all enjoyed reading as much as I did writing it)


	8. Black Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I will take your demons and I will carry them all with me._  
>  ~ Asra T.

Root knocked on the door as she leaned much of her weight against Shaw’s side.  
Shaw tried not to shuffle on her feet as they waited.  
She was looking after Root. She was looking after her because they were the same. Root would do the same for her.

“Open up, Zach,” Root knocked harder, pressing her ear to the door.

The door flew open and a teen with messy hair and a tired expression looked them over. They probably looked a mess.  
Root had bruises all over her face, and was cradling her stomach; Shaw had ligature marks on her neck, bloody fists, and maybe a broken nose; and Reese was... well, he was just a guy in a suit.

“Jesus,” the boy, Zach, cursed. His eyes darted between the three of them, lingering on Root’s frail figure, “Jesus Christ, Root.”

“We need a place to crash, I don’t know how long we’ll be,” Root pleaded, Shaw had to tear her eyes away from the tears flooding up in the boy’s.

He ushered them in, “Are you hurt?”

“We’ll live,” Shaw assured him, glancing around the student accommodation.

A single bed, a desk, a wardrobe. Nothing that could be used as a weapon, nothing that would suggest the boy was a threat.  
A window overlooked the desk and Root lowered the blinds, forcing them into semi-darkness.

Root winced as she sat down on the swivel chair.  
She lifted her top and revealed a flurry of red bruises littering otherwise pale skin.

“You need to go to a hospital,” Zach worried over her, “Who did this to you?”

“I’m fine,” Root got out through gritted teeth as she glanced over at Shaw’s bloody nose, “You should get some ice on that.”

Zach scrambled out of the room, presumably to get some.

Shaw strode over to Root and knelt down in front of her.  
They had disobeyed so many orders. But now they were free.  
Now they could do whatever they wanted to whomever they wanted.  
They were free.

“What now?” Shaw found herself asking as she gazed up at the other woman; her friend. Was friend the right term? After going through all they had - the deception, the discovery of truth, the murder of Martine, the murder of their _Master_ \- Root deserved a term better than friend, Shaw just didn't know what.

“Now we save others. As many as we can. We will be the  _walcząca_  as Papa used to say, _”_  Root smirked, her eyes twinkling with something only an assassin would understand – the excitement of rebellion. They would be the insurrection against HYDRA. They would work for themselves, by themselves. They would save people.

They would be the good guys for once in their lives. People in the future would know them as those who saved humanity. Did she want that - for strangers to think about the sacrifices she would make? Did she want them to wonder how she fought, who she loved?

Would these actions mean anything?

“I have ice and a first aid kit,” Zach announced his presence and laid them out on his bed.

Root stepped into the shower first, feeling the water battering down on her, washing away the mess of the night. Shaw peeled off the layers of clothes on Root one by one and they fell to the floor in a sloppy heap. Idly, she wondered if the clothes slumped on the floor reminded Root of Ivan's dead body. She didn't say that, though, that would be insensitive.

Shaw kept her eyes straight, kept her head on straighter. Her eyes didn't stray from Root's wounds, it wasn't fair. Root needed to heal. Root needed a friend.

Shaw watched as Root tilted her head back out of the spray of water.

Her fingers had a mind (a _pitiful_ mind) of their own as they caressed the skin above Root's hipbone. Root gulped as Shaw touched the bruise on her stomach.

If only she has taken the gun then none of this would be happening. Shaw would go on with her life blissfully unaware of feelings and pain and something that made her swallow a lump in her throat.

Root's shoulders started to shake and she heard gasps, that was when Shaw realized she was crying.

How did she still have these emotions?

She shouldn't be thinking about that. She enveloped Root in a hug; she'd seen many people be comforted by this gesture. Root wasn't broken, Root was meant to be pure and sweet. Root was all Shaw wasn't.

But Root wasn't weak. No. She was just fragile. She was just human.

“If we're the same, then why can I still feel?” Root managed to get out, eyes not straying from the tiled floor.

She couldn't tell what were tears and what was the water beating down on them. She didn't care.

Shaw shook her head in response; she didn't know how to answer. All they needed to do was get cleaned up. Then everything would be okay. She'd never had to think about consequences before.

Blood on their hands. Red in their ledger. They would wipe it out by being the Resistance. They would be the good guys.

Shaw put her hands on Root's cheeks, forcing her to look at her. They would make it out of here alive. They wouldrun away from the program. They  _would_ build their lives up again.

Shaw closed the distance between them slowly, hesitantly, like she thought Root would turn away. But she didn't. Root allowed their lips to press together softly and Shaw felt all the tension in her body ebb away.

That was the first kiss they'd had where Shaw didn't expect something from it - whether it be to keep up appearances to get close to her target, or to fulfil her sexual needs. It was purposeless. It was unnecessary. Yet, Shaw wanted to do it again, so she did. And again. Until Root had closed her eyes and put her forehead against Shaw's.

She listened to their breathing, felt her heart hammering in her chest.

It felt so serene in that moment, as if the outside world didn't exist.

But it did.

They changed clothes and didn't speak about it. Shaw was thankful for that, she didn't know what to say, she shouldn't have kissed her then, it was a mistake. 

Shaw didn’t want to comment on how Root looked, on how the clothes from Zach were falling off her shoulder, on how Root’s hair was drying in tight, messy ringlets. Maybe kissing her in the shower wasn't a mistake.

Root wanted to set Shaw’s nose first but Shaw pushed her down on to the bed and lifted up her top.  
Surprisingly, Root didn’t make a lewd comment about their predicament and let Shaw apply ointment to her sores. She really was affected by the death of Ivan. She still had her humanity.

She looked as though she had been through the war - purple bruises, bloody fists, everything Shaw wanted erased from her mind. Was this what guilt felt like? This coiling in her chest making her want to throw up?  
Shaw tried not to think about what would have happened if she had taken a gun instead of her knife yet her mind kept going there. She would still be in the program, Root would be dead, and this mission would have been a distant memory.  
No, that was incorrect. Root had changed her life, she had _saved_ Shaw. She wouldn’t just forget about that.

Once they had finished treating Root’s injuries Reese ripped up the bedsheet and made a wrap for Shaw’s bruised hands.

“What about the bomb in the Hub?” Root asked as she watched Reese clean Shaw’s nose of blood. Her voice was still small, though she didn't look as tired anymore.

“My contact says they found it in the morning. The senior HYDRA agent who made everyone leave, Sitwell, was arrested.” Reese informed them as he handed Shaw the ice in a towel.

“What a shame,” Root hummed with a smile.

“They’ll say you failed, you know,” Shaw said with a teasing smile making Root pout adorably, “Some Red Room agent you are.”

“Says the assassin who failed to kill me,” Root shot back, matching Shaw’s grin with her own. She seemed in lighter spirits at that joke.

Shaw felt something bloom in her chest at the sight of Root smiling. It was a nice feeling, she decided.

“We are hopeless,” Shaw concluded before she looked over at Zach, “Sorry man, for all of this.”

“Assassin... Red—Who _are_ you?” Zach asked as he slumped on the bed next to Root. She held out a hand for him to take. He didn’t.

Reese and Shaw shared a look and excused themselves to check the perimeter.

“I can’t pay you now, I’m not actually sure when I can pay you,” Shaw admitted as they trudged in the summer heat, “but I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for us.”

“I like you guys, my normal job’s boring compared to what you do,” Reese smiled back at her, pushing her lightly on the shoulder.

Shaw shook her head with a smile, “You literally work at a clandestine counter-terrorism unit of the government. Your life isn’t so boring.”

“Worked,” he corrected as they passed a few college kids. None of them looked suspicious, “HYDRA have been disbanded now. You may be an assassin without a target, but I’m a rebel without a cause.”

Shaw rolled her eyes and shook her head, making Reese smile as they re-entered the dorm room.  
She did have a target. She _and Root_ had a target – they would take down the Red Room once and for all. Not just one base here, one agent there. They needed to go after Madame B., and the scientists making the Black Widow serum.

Zach was lying on the bed, his head on Root’s lap as she brushed her fingers through his hair.

She lifted his head when she noticed them and replaced herself with a pillow.

Root approached them stiffly, wrapping her arms around herself, “He says we can stay here for a while.”

“I’m sorry about the whole me-trying-to-kill-you thing,” Shaw whispered, not wanting to wake Zach up. Or maybe she didn’t want Root to hear her apology. She would think she's weak. Sentimental. Like any other person.

“It happens, nothing personal, right?” Root brushed her off, “Besides, you’re not the first girlfriend I’ve had go psycho on me.” It was calm, teasing, as if she was talking about something as tedious as the weather.

But Shaw had stiffened. Girlfriend. Was that what she was?  
Maybe that’s why ‘friend’ didn’t sound right. Maybe it’s because they weren’t friends at all. They were more than that.

Did she want to be Root’s girlfriend? She hadn’t really thought about it.  
Did she want to keep having sex? Well, yeah. Why not? Sex without feelings was good.

“Shaw?” Root’s voice called her back, “What did I say?”

Shaw’s eyes flitted over to Root’s panicked expression. She shouldn’t have been thinking about relationships. They had just survived a near-death experience.  
Besides, relationships were for amateurs.  
But she felt the need to be honest with Root; after their mutual deception at the start, they deserved some honesty.

“You called me your girlfriend,” Shaw said. In the corner of her eye, she could see Reese wince and move to sit on the desk, “I don’t do relationships. I don't know how to.”

“Okay,” Root responded in a small voice.

Shaw felt a coiling in her stomach and felt the need to explain herself further, “It wasn’t the Red Room that made me forget my emotions.” She took a deep, calming breath; only Ivan knew about this, “I have an Axis II personality disorder. Technically, I don’t have feelings. Technically, I’m a sociopath. I don't think I'm worth all of this... trouble.”

She could feel Root’s stare on the side of her head but didn’t dare look. She wasn’t used to being so open, so vulnerable. It was new for her; all of this was very new for her.

“You’re enough, just the way you are,” Root said finally. She reached out to brush a curl away from Shaw’s face, cradling her cheek until she’d coerced Shaw’s gaze back up to her, “Thank you for telling me, Shaw. How about 'friends'?”

Shaw nodded, feeling something hot behind her eyes, as if her body needed to cry.  
She wasn’t enough. She was barely a shell of a person. She wasn’t worth Root’s feelings.

“Do you think they have booze in this place?” Shaw asked with a glance around the room.

Reese held up a bottle of Smirnoff vodka with a brief smile, “You Russians know how to party, am I right?”

Shaw smirked as she plucked the bottle from his grasp, and took a good glug.

" _Nostrovia_ ," he smiled back.

 

* * *

 

Root stared at Shaw as the younger woman drank. It was all she could do for the time being.  
Less experienced people would want to get away as soon as they could. But they knew they had to stay put for a while, wait for the heat to blow over.

With HYDRA infesting S.H.I.E.L.D., they had bigger problems to deal with than a couple of rogue assassins.

“Where will we go tomorrow morning?” Root asked, resisting the desire to drink; one of them had to be sober.

“To my cache in Chicago,” Shaw said, shaking her head to a beat in her mind, “I have money, passports.”

Reese had passed out long ago. He couldn’t keep up.

“Okay,” Root sat on the sofa; her mind had begun to get groggy from lack of sleep.

She was beginning to have doubts about everything – she shouldn’t have killed Ivan. She should have stayed with him and taken the Red Room down from the inside. She should have waited and got more information on herself, on her parents.  
She wanted to be a full person again. She felt incomplete, like a chunk of her was missing and the only one who could have pieced her back together lay dead in her sort-of lover’s room.

Well, unless she could find her Papa. Then everything would be explained.

Shaw turned to look at her then, swinging her hips to whatever music was stuck inside her mind.  
All her other previous comments about not being a good dancer were bullshit, it seemed.

Shaw didn't kill her. Shaw kept her alive. That had to count for something, right? That had to mean that somewhere deep inside Shaw there was a part of her that wanted Root to stay by her side.

Maybe it was destiny that Shaw was sent to kill her. Maybe their fates were intertwined in some strange way neither of them could make out yet. Maybe there was hope for them yet.

She could feel the effects of the day now, it was making her get philosophical. That paired with her injuries, well, Root’s mind was not all there.

That’s what she would blame it on.

That’s what she _did_ blame it on later in the night when she and Shaw were kissing again.

They kissed without abandonment, without a care in the world. Shaw tasted like vodka and recklessness; Root was addicted.

Root felt her top being lifted up and tried to contain her wince when her stomach started to ache. She felt Shaw pull back and stare at her. In fact, she wasn’t sure if it was at her or through her.  
Either way, Root felt vulnerable. She felt alive.  
She pulled Shaw back down to her by threading her hand through the black hair and pulling. Hard.

Shaw practically growled into the kiss. It was tongues and teeth and desperate and Root grabbed on to Shaw’s shoulders when she started to feel dizzy.

“I can’t see straight,” Root whispered over Shaw’s labored breaths, “No pun intended.”

Shaw paused to even out her breathing again and nodded, placing her hand on Root’s cheek, “You should sleep, anyway. Focus on healing.”

It felt intimate. It felt strange.

Root felt a tightening in her chest; she’d been without the program for so long she knew what it was.  
This emotion. It was the one that could make someone so happy that they thought they could cure world hunger. So free that they felt like they could fly. So blindsided that nothing else mattered in the world.  
So… so stupid that they believed. Hoped.

They cared with all of their hearts. They loved with all of their beings. They allowed themselves to be blissfully happy because they could, because they had the emotional capabilities.

Her heart thudded dully in her chest. Shaw had snuck past her defenses like a sledgehammer to her marble exterior and made herself at home in Root's mind. She hadn't put up much of a fight, her defenses were down, they always were when it came to Shaw.

Root couldn’t feel these things, she _wouldn’t._ She would be signing her own death warrant. It would be a suicide mission.  
Feelings were for idiots or people with nothing better to do. Feelings like… feelings like love.

Root shook her head and pushed herself away from Shaw, stumbling back to Zach’s room.

She willed her mind not to remember the night and the thoughts that came with it. She couldn’t blame her thoughts on alcohol, she hadn't had a single sip.

She had only just started to pick apart Shaw's personality, started to find out what was real and what had become a mess of different façades, she couldn't develop feelings.

Root sprawled on the swivel chair in Zach's room and tried to ignore the burning in her throat; she felt like she'd inhaled a bag of nails.

She thought back to Shaw's skin, back to moving against her without regard for consequences.

But not matter how much she hoped, there were always consequences.

She shook her head.

No. It wasn’t love. It was infatuation, it was fixation, it was… it wasn’t love.

Love was for idiots.  
Root was not an idiot.


	9. Grey Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart will always be somewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of living and loving people in more than one place._  
>  ~ Miriam Adeney

The team – did they constitute as a team? – had driven all the way to Chicago, only stopping at gas stations to steal new cars and get food.  
It was early morning now and it was Shaw’s turn to drive. She gripped the steering wheel tightly, afraid of losing control. Her head pounded angrily and, for a second, she regretted drinking so much the night before. But she had enjoyed herself. And it had distracted her from the feelings bubbling up just under the surface.  
It was better without feelings. All of this was.

It would be some time before they got to the cache.  
In the Red Room they had been taught to cache some money and weapons away, to store some in secret in case of an emergency.  
Root didn’t have her own, she’d been sent undercover almost as soon as she graduated, or that’s what they’d gathered from the few memories Root had. That and she’d been put into the foster system. She remembered being raised by a nice family.  
She told Shaw she wanted to know about herself, about her past. About her life. Shaw didn’t understand it.  
She never wanted to find out about her parents, about the life she could have led because it wasn’t her life. She didn’t want to think about what could have been. That wasn’t how assassins lived – they didn’t think about coulds or woulds or shoulds.  
What mattered now was moving forward, not back.  
She wanted to move on with her life, she wanted to start becoming a full person.

Shaw felt a grumbling in her chest.  
She should leave Root and Reese to fend for themselves; she had more of a chance of surviving on her own than with others.  
And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to leave them. They had become a team, bonded over the death of Ivan, united by the idea of Resistance.  
They were in this together. Maybe solidarity was a form of resistance.  
_Maybe resistance is futile_ , Shaw thought for a beat, but she dismissed it as she turned off the expressway.

They should fight together. After all, without a war what’s a soldier to do?

Shaw’s cache was stored in a bus station in Chicago. That’s where they were headed.

She glanced back at Root in the mirror.  
She was stretched out on the backseats, using a hoodie she’d borrowed from Zach as a make-shift pillow. She looked peaceful.  
Root hadn’t spoken about the incident in the shower. Perhaps she thought Shaw had forgotten about it. But she hadn’t; there was something about the incident, about consoling Root while she cried, about kissing her when she didn’t need to, that had awoken something inside Shaw, something previously dormant or something buried under years and years of indoctrination.

She had begun to feel. It was quiet, like a whispering in the back of her mind urging her to take action.  
That’s why she was here – with Root in the back seat and Reese in the front – in a stolen car headed to the only semblance of safety she could think of.

If she could track other Red Room bases, they could stop them once and for all.  
It wouldn’t just stop with Ivan. They needed to get to the woman. Koslova? Yes, that sounded familiar, that sounded right.

When had it got to this point? Where she was unsure of who she could trust? It wasn’t her. She had never thought about betraying the Red Room, not until Root had suggested it.  
She had become impressionable. She was no longer marble. Maybe that was a good thing.

The sky outside was shielded by a dark raincloud, she could barely see the world in front of her.  
A year from now, she could be lying at the bottom of the ocean, or she could have a white-picket fence surrounding her suburban house, cooking (burning) cookies and waiting for Root to come home.

Shaw started, almost losing control of the car.  
She swerved to keep from crashing, clenching her jaw as she righted herself.

It would only be a matter of time before they parted ways. Just take down the Red Room and the scientists and HYDRA and then get out. She didn’t need to stay long enough to wonder if she wanted to be _with_ Root, though she knew deep down that decision was already made up.

She glanced up at the raincloud that had claimed most of the sky now and turned on her headlights.

Get in. Take down the Red Room. Get out.  
Simple.

 

* * *

 

_The brunette rolled over, facing the blonde. They didn’t know each other’s names; no girl was allowed to talk unless for interrogation purposes. It was unnecessary._

_The brunette smiled with an innocence belonging to someone who hadn’t been here long enough to have it taken from her._  
_She tried a tense smile back, fearing it looked more like a grimace than not._  
_Had she been caught?_

_She had stolen food after dinner – a single bread roll – and stuffed it under her pillow, the rationed food burning a hole into her pillow since she’d hidden it away. She had saved it for when she was hungrier._

_She turned and dipped her hand underneath her pillow, feeling relief wash over her as her fingers touched the stale bread. She was going to take it out, but then she looked over at the brunette._

_The brunette’s eyes looked fearful and she quickly stuffed the bread safely under her pillow._

_She heard Madame B’s footsteps fall against the wooden floors. She watched how the brunette clutched the bedsheets._

_Weak. She couldn’t feel scared. They weren’t allowed._

_The blonde sat up as Madame B got to her bed._

_With a cold click (and an even colder look from Madame B) her handcuffs were undone._  
_She rubbed the tender skin with her hand._

_That look meant no breakfast._

_Her stomach ached, though she was sure it wasn’t hunger. They were given enough – barely – to survive and maintain muscle mass. The hunger was meant to irritate them, make them more likely to snap and start fights._  
_It worked._  
_She remembered a feisty shorter brunette who had fought another girl for a scrap of steak thrown unexpectedly into the middle of their bedroom._

_Madame B had turned away now and she took her chance._  
_She pulled the bread out from under her pillow and watched as the brunette beside her shuffled on the bed._

_She looked back down to the bread, and then at the girl opposite her._  
_Her heart hurt with a feeling she remembered from her previous life. Pity._  
_The brunette wasn’t particularly strong, never got involved in fights unless she had to. She was weak._

_She broke the bread in half and held it out to the brunette. Her eyes widened and she took it with hesitant fingers._  
_They ate in a silence, eyes and ears firmly trained on not getting caught, until the brunette flashed her a smile above her bread._

_“Katya,” the brunette mouthed, cheeks puffed out from the bread stuffed inside._

_“Root,” the blonde mouthed back._

_The contraband tasted like secrets and danger and friendship. She should have known they would catch them._

 

_They stood outside in their shorts and t-shirts in a single file line._  
_Madame B regarded them with hard eyes until they saw an older man approach them._

_He was old and wrinkled and scary, nothing like Papa (she didn’t know why she could remember him)._

_The snow hammered heavily down on them and she tried not to shiver._

_The man looked them over, “Root. Katya.”_

_The pair stepped forward, the other girl’s forming into a circle around them. They had seen the bread. This was their punishment._

_A knife was tossed onto the floor and Root and Katya stumbled to grab it._  
_Katya was faster, but she looked at Root with something like regret. She swung the knife and it caught Root’s t-shirt._  
_She wasn’t aiming properly._  
_Why wasn’t she trying?_

_The knife was kicked to the floor in the middle of the girls but they ignored it for now._

_They exchanged blows until the blonde’s skin was layered with sweat. Katya looked weaker; her long brown hair stuck to her face, though her eyes were still shining. She was still feeling emotion. Didn’t she understand that’s what they were being punished for?_

_Katya was pulling her punches, she wasn’t trying her best._  
_Root needed to survive._

_It was her or Katya._

_Root lunged for the knife and rolled to soften her fall._  
_She turned back to Katya, who had leapt up in the air._  
_It wasn’t her fault._  
_Gravity did most of the work._  
_It wasn’t technically Root’s kill, because she didn’t mean to do it._

_But the knife proudly stuck out of Katya’s abdomen._  
_The brunette’s eyes widened. The adrenaline was wearing off._  
_Root’s hands began to shake. She looked over at Madame B., who nodded once._

_Root ignored the bile rising in her throat and bit her lip, stifling the sob that was threatening to escape her when she took the blade out of Katya’s body._

_The body lowered on to the snow slowly, Root’s mind became numb, frozen on the look of betrayal on Katya’s face._

_The snow had turned into rain, she watched the blood diffuse into the crystal white snow._

_The man forced her up and gripped her face, “No attachments, child. Consider yourself lucky, your life shall not be spared again.”_

Root jumped awake just as the car came to a stop in front of a bus station.  
She gulped as she remembered her surroundings. Her new mission.

She dutifully got out of the car and followed Shaw to a battered metal locker in the station.

She watched numbly as Shaw took a bag out of the cache. She unzipped the bag and revealed a couple of Colombian passports, one Spanish one, along with several clips of ammunition, a stack of C4, and a mean-looking semi-automatic pistol, all buried in what looked to be at least $10,000 in different currencies.

Shaw handed her the pistol.

“Can I have another one?” Root asked.

Shaw frowned, “Two guns at once? That's kinda lame.”

“Please?” Root jutted out her bottom lip, feeling like a child asking for more sweets.

“Fine.” Shaw rolled her eyes but gave her another gun from her holster.

Root grinned but then tensed. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, the foreboding disposition telling her to run again.  
They were packing everything away into their respective shopping bags when she spotted a man lurking.

He wore sunglasses and a baseball cap to hide his face. It made it difficult to know where he was looking but Root knew one thing for certain - he was there for them.

She nudged Shaw’s arm, “We need to move. Now.”

Shaw nodded and they exited the bus station, bags full of money and ammunition.  
The pair ducked into an alleyway behind the bus station.

Root’s heart hammered in her chest. She took her gun out her pocket and hid behind a dumpster with Shaw.

She waited in silence.  
Her stomach churned with anticipation as she heard movement. She hurriedly put the silencer on her weapon.

She closed her eyes and willed her heart rate to slow. She coiled in caution, bit her lip in anticipation. Her senses were sharp, focused, she wouldn’t let him get the drop on her.  
She wouldn’t be sloppy. Her clammy hands wrapped tighter around the cold weapon. She wouldn’t be sloppy.

Root frowned when Shaw held her hand up in front of her. She was being told to stay.  
Shaw was protecting her again.

Shaw leapt out from behind the dumpster, gun brandished.

Root could see her resisting the urge to shoot the man in the shoulder. That’s what the old version of her would have done. She would have shot him in the shoulder and then the head like a good soldier.

But that wasn’t her anymore. Now she was better.

Shaw levelled the man with a stare, “Who do you work for?”

Root peeked above the dumpster to watch the scene. The man’s cold expression was fixed into his chiseled features.  
As she focused, she picked up on a small scar above his lip.  
He took his shades off and grinned at Shaw, though his eyes remained glazed, emotionless.

“Tell me where she is,” he commanded, the strong voice vibrated along the walls of the side street.

There was a twinge to his voice, as if he used to have an accent before it was forced out of him. Root’s ears strained to place it.

Why hadn’t he killed Shaw yet? Maybe they wanted her to live. Why?

“Tell me who you’re talking about and I might,” Shaw quipped as she watched the man reach into his pocket and produce a still shot of Root. Shit.  
It looked to have been taken by a dashboard camera outside a gas station.  
He tossed the image to the floor and Shaw’s eyes tracked its movement.

Wrong move.

When she looked back up at him, he had produced his own weapon.

Shaw shook her head and clenched her jaw, speaking through gritted teeth as she repeated herself, “Who the hell are you? Who do you work for?”

“Isn’t that a question you should ask yourself?”

They stared each other down. He still didn’t shoot her. Why?

“We just want her. Tell us where she is,” he said slowly, as if Shaw were some mewling quim. She was stronger than he would ever know. She was made of marble.

“You’re not getting to her,” Shaw replied, holding her weapon tighter, “Not unless you go through me.”

How chivalrous, Root thought with a small smile. She did care.

Shaw gave a warning shot to his feet, the silencer muffling the sound.  
He look startled for a beat but then he grinned manically.

Root had to act.

He was going to charge at Shaw, but Root brought her weapons up and shot him in the shoulder and the head at once, the forehead exploding in a mist of red. A third eye, just above his eyebrows.  
Shaw glanced back at Root, at the smoking guns in her hand.

It was what they did. It was what she knew.

Shaw smirked, “Okay, that was kinda hot.”

“A thank-you would be nice,” Root smiled softly as she waltzed closer to the body.

“I’ll thank you later, when we’re safe,” Shaw responded with another smirk.

“Promise?” She tried not to sound so hopeful.

Shaw ignored her in favor of patting the man’s body down. She took his phone for later; they would be able to hack it and find out where the man had been.  
Maybe he would lead them to the scientists, or to Madame B.

Root wordlessly joined her side, not willing to deal with the fact that she was the only one who had got caught on the camera.

Something caught Root’s eye. It was a small tattoo on the side of his neck.  
It looked kind of like an anchor, or the letter _P_. Oh, God.

Root’s eyes widened with recognition.

“Poland.”

“Huh?” Shaw looked up at her after taking the wallet from the man.

“We need to go to Poland.”

Polska walcząca. Polish Resistance. The man was from her home.

Reese rolled up in a new vehicle and Shaw looked at her strangely.

“Poland it is, then.” Shaw said as she herded Root inside the vehicle.

They had been driving for a few moments before anyone spoke again.

“We’re being tailed,” Reese spoke in a tense whisper as he checked the mirrors again, “Harley Davidson. Two cars behind us.”

Root frowned, “That's a standard S.H.I.E.L.D. bike.”

Root smiled and took the opportunity with both hands.  
She turned to Shaw. Neither of them had turned yet to confirm the tail and Root was just doing what needed to be done.

“Do you trust me?” She asked Shaw.

“Not in the slightest,” Shaw responded with a frown.

Root smiled at her and fastened her mouth to Shaw’s, receiving a taste that was so _her_. She felt insatiable near Shaw. Just infatuation. Just lust. Nothing more.  
In the car mirror she saw the Harley Davidson trailing after them, weaving in and out of the cars behind them. Root watched it, her mouth on Shaw’s.

Shaw pushed her off with a huff, straightening her back, “What was that?”

“Confirming the tail,” Root shrugged her shoulders with an innocent smile.

“You could have just looked behind you.” Shaw grumbled but Root saw the almost imperceptible smile ghosting her features. She made no move to back away, though, instead winding her arms around Root’s neck.

“But this is so much more fun,” Root quipped and molded her lips against Shaw’s again, tasting the poison that was Sameen Shaw.

For a beat, Root got lost in the moment. Shaw’s mouth was on hers again _finally_. Did she remember Root’s moment of weakness in the shower? No, she’d drank so much that night, there was no way.  
She drew back and saw Shaw’s glazed eyes before she could blink it away. But Root had seen it, the galaxy swirling within them. The universe's infinite possibilities just one mere confession away. But Root didn't have the balls to confess her feelings. She was too weak.  
Root watched in the mirror as the motorbike dragged behind them down the street.

Reese had increased his speed a bit, and the bike was struggling to remain anonymous.

“We should get out of the city, find a motel.” Reese said from his position in the driver’s seat.

“Fine, just make sure there’s running water. I need a shower,” Shaw mumbled back, earning a teasing smile from Root.

The taller woman glanced back – there was no sign of the motorbike anymore.

She climbed into the front and sat with Reese as he drove.  
She got out her laptop and, after consultation from the team, had successfully purchased more passports from the black market, and paid for flights and accommodation in Poland.

She felt strange as she thought about going back to Poland.  
She was sure she hadn’t been back since the Red Room kidnapped her.

She hoped it would feel like home, though her definition had changed so much over the past couple of weeks, until she was left with one constant – Shaw.  
Shaw had become her home.  
But Shaw was unobtainable.  
She was protecting her now, but later? When Root revealed her feelings? She would run for the hills.

She loaded up the S.H.I.E.L.D. database (through a back-channel of course, she’s not an amateur) and searched for a name – Aleksander. Her father.

She would find him because he was her family, not some assassin she barely knew.

Shaw looked over her shoulder, “We’ll find him, Root. I promise.”

And there went Root’s heart again, beating fast enough she could have been having a heart attack and all because Shaw believed in her. She believed that she would find Papa.

What more reassurance does a gal need?


	10. Blue Skies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Nothing in this world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last._  
>  ~ W. Somerset Maugham

_Your name is_ _Sameen_ _Shaw. You_ _were part of the Red Room_ _,_ _an assassin. Your_ _Master was Ivan_ _, you killed him._ _Root and Reese are your friends._ _Steak tastes good with_   _cheap beer. D_ _on’t drink vodka_   _if_ _you don’t want a mean hangover._ _You want to become a full person._  

Shaw sighed and crumpled up the receipt she had written on. 

It was pointless, her trying to remember. It was only a matter of time before her memory was wiped and she lost who she was again.   
_You don’t want to find out who you_ _were before the car crash that killed your father_ _, it’s not important._ She added it to the list. 

Stuck in this dingy hotel room, with Reese showering and Root sleeping already, Shaw felt somewhat anxious.   
Were they just delaying the inevitable by running from HYDRA and the Polish Resistance?   
She looked at the scrunched-up receipt once more and rolled her eyes, straightening it out again.  _You don’t have to be marble to be strong._  

She shook her head and crumpled it up again, tossing it in the trash. After all, she wasn’t part of the program anymore, there wouldn’t be any reason for her memory to be wiped. 

The Resistance. How could she be so stupid to think this would actually work? That they could actually go up against an army of Red Room agents trained exactly like them and still make it out alive? 

Shaw’s features hardened. 

No matter. Her life belonged to herself, she could do whatever she goddamn pleased. And if that meant she was going to fight a battle in which she would most certainly die, well, so be it. 

She looked at Root in the mirror above the table she was sat at.   
Root looked so peaceful, buried in the crisp white blanket, hair fanned out around her like a halo, fingers grazing the keyboard of the laptop. 

Shaw crossed the distance to Root, and carefully lifted her hand to pull the laptop away. 

Root looked so fragile like this, Shaw couldn’t help but reach out with tentative fingers and touch her cheek. It was soft to the touch, so delicate. Breakable.   
She supposed Root was breakable. But, then again, so was Shaw. 

She brushed a lock away from Root’s face and resisted the desire to kiss Root’s forehead.   
Unwarranted. Yet the thought was overwhelming to the point she was leaning down and pressing her lips to Root’s temple.   
Root groaned in her sleep and Shaw couldn’t help the small smile pulling at her lips. Her heart ached strangely, she couldn’t comprehend this emotion. But she wanted to understand it badly, she liked feeling like this – weightless, but... whole.   
And it was all because of one woman and her crooked smile, godawful flirting, and stupidly annoying lips. 

“Sorry, I just want to grab a new shirt,” Reese whispered into the room, interrupting the tranquil air that had overtaken the room previously. 

Shaw sidestepped, clearing her throat of that emotion, and allowed Reese to grab a new set of clothes to cover his very naked body. 

“I can sleep on the floor if you wanna take the bed,” Reese suggested, nodding at the small space between the foot of the bed and the table, “Just throw me a pillow.” 

“Thanks,” Shaw complied with his wishes and threw the pillow at him – some may say a little too hard since he missed and it hit the wall, almost crashing into the mirror, but that was hardly Shaw’s fault if Reese was a lousy catch – and she lifted the sheets to crawl into bed with Root. 

She maneuvered herself out of her tank top and jeans and threw them on the floor in a heap.   
She lay awake for most of the night, eyes fixated on a small crack on the ceiling, on the subtle but telling chatter outside their window. 

They had managed to make it a couple hours away from Chicago to a lovely little village called New Glarus. It was somewhat isolated; the locals didn’t care about strays or ‘city folk’ looking to get away from it all. It was nice, Shaw could see herself settling down here, after the whole Red Room debacle was over. The promise of quality beer was another incentive to make it out alive. 

Shaw stifled a groan when she heard snoring at the foot of the bed. She turned over and covered her hand over her ear, screwing her eyes shut. 

She felt shuffling and then a poke on her side. 

“Are you awake?” Shaw heard beside her and tried not to roll her eyes. 

“What’s wrong, Root?”  

“I can’t sleep with Reese snoring like that,” Shaw could hear the pout on her lips and cracked an eye open. 

“What do you want me to do about it?” The snarky comment was a knee-jerk reaction and she immediately winced as it came out. 

Root merely shrugged her shoulders and sighed. 

She could smother him with a pillow (too mundane), slit his throat (too messy)… 

Shaw opened up her arms suddenly, maybe before she even realized what she was doing, and Root’s eyes lit up.   
She allowed Root to shuffle into her arms, even allowed her to rest her head on Shaw’s shoulder. And then Root’s arm was thrown across her waist and Shaw forgot to breathe for a beat. 

She held her close, feeling the warm puffs of air escaping Root’s mouth tickle at her neck.   
She kissed the top of the mess of brown curls next to her and held on tighter, never wanting to let go. 

But she knew this calm wouldn’t last. The calm before the storm, that’s what this was. The idea that everything good she was feeling now would be countered by something much worse.   
Regression to the mean. 

“No matter what, we will find your father, okay?” Shaw reassured her, though there was no reason to. Shaw just wanted her to know they would. Or they would die trying.

“What if we don’t?” Root asked against her neck, breath hot against her skin.

Shaw squeezed her tighter, “Then we go after the Red Room, continue our old plan. Be the Resistance.” 

An instinct to preserve life was beginning to appear within Shaw; she didn’t want to murder everyone she’d ever encountered, just those who deserved it. She was developing a sense of right and wrong, understood that some people did bad things for selfish reasons. Like Ivan – he was part of the Red Room because he was loyal to the Soviet Union. 

She recognized that she didn’t have to murder just for the sake of it. Preserving life wasn’t weakness. It was strength. She was still being strong, even though she wasn’t marble.   
Shaw stared back up at the ceiling and found the crack again, tracing it with her eyes until she had memorized it. 

“I like you,” came a whisper. 

Shaw tensed, though she knew she shouldn’t have done; Root was off her in an instant, and a cold chill passed over Shaw’s body, missing the heat of another. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have...” Root gestured strangely with her hands, a hard crease between her eyebrows. 

“It’s okay, I,” Shaw sat up on the bed, shaking her head, letting the words mull over in her mind, “I think I care for you.” That niggling in the back of her mind telling her to take action – that's what caring must be. She would kill for Root. This was what caring was, of that Shaw was certain. 

Root looked surprised for a moment, Shaw was somewhat surprised at her honesty too, but she wouldn’t admit it out loud. 

The tense air that had overtaken them was broken by a loud snore from Reese. 

Root smiled at him and then turned back to Shaw, “We’ll figure it out later. Together.” 

Together.  _Solidarity was a form of Resistance._  Yes. They would figure it out together, because the Red Room would hate them for it, hate that they were able to feel. 

Instead of living in constant fear of the Red Room, the least she could do was forget about it for a while. And if that meant hugging Root while Reese slept next to them on the floor in a cramped hotel in the middle of nowhere, then Shaw was prepared to do it for however long she needed to. And maybe even longer if they made it out alive. 

She let the sound of Root’s breathing and the stutter of car engines lull her to sleep. 

 

* * *

 

 _The room Shaw was in was cold, colder than the woods outside. She shuffled on the bed, feeling a pinch on her arm. It smelt like disinfectant, or the typical hospital smell she remembered from countless times in the Emergency ward of the Red Room._    
_Blearily, she cracked open an eye. Her nose flared with panic, her heartrate quickened, and she hurried to get off the bed. Her mind whirred, head pounding as memories flew through her mind - the car accident, being rescued, the torture, the killing..._  

 _She remembered where she was. She needed to escape._  

 _“No, no, don’t move,_ _doch_ _,” she heard beside her and then a hand on her stomach was keeping her down._  

 _“_ _Wha_ - _Where am I?” Shaw stumbled out, drowsy eyes scanning the hospital room, catching on a red flag on top of the doorway, the pounding headache constant._  

 _“Congratulations, Agent. You_ _have graduated,” the_ _man said in accented Russian._  

 _She stared at him,_ _eyes searching for an answer to why this was happening, what it meant._  

 _Her eyes_ _widened, drifting down her body – blue hospital gown, the man’s wrinkly hand_. _.._ _a gauze. On her groin._  

 _Her eyes hardened, “What have you done_   _to me_ _?”_  She _stared up at his hazel eyes, at the scar on his cheek, seeing how he refused to squirm under her gaze._  

 _“I made you better,” the man said with a sneer, “you’ll see that someday.”_  

 _And then he wrapped his hand around her throat, cutting off her air supply._    
_Shaw struggled, her hands were restrained to the bed._  

 _She kicked him in the stomach but the hands around her neck were iron, unrelenting._  

 _The man’s face began to morph into something from a horror show. Shaw wanted to scream, or growl or something, but she couldn’t breathe._  

She forced her eyes open, and tried to take in a gasping breath but found she couldn’t.  

Root was straddling her hips, eyes glazed over and emotionless as she tightened her grip on Shaw’s throat. 

Shaw looked up at her questioningly, hands clutching Root’s, trying desperately to pry them away. 

Her chest was getting tighter, vision starting to blur, headache still pounding angrily against her skull. 

“Root!” Reese shouted at her, pulling her away roughly. 

He yanked her away from Shaw and held her against the wall, his arm against her throat. 

“Stop, let go of her,” Shaw rubbed at the tender flesh of her neck and took a stuttering breath as oxygen overwhelmed her lungs. She rushed over to Root, who was still reaching for Shaw, eyes remaining apathetic, “It’s just a nightmare.” 

“Really?” Reese questioned, glancing between Shaw and Root. 

Shaw nodded, lightly touching Root’s cheek, “Root, wake up.” 

And then she slapped her. Root growled and bared her teeth, like a wild animal. 

“Wake up, Root,” Shaw swallowed her guilt and slapped her again. 

This time, Root’s eyes widened. She stopped struggling, body deflated. She gulped and shook her head. 

“Shaw?” 

Reese stepped away looking dumbfounded as he retreated to the bed, where he sat. 

Shaw’s heart hammered in her chest, still winded. 

Root’s eyes tracked around the room and then landed on Shaw. More specifically on Shaw’s neck, where she imagined there were some marks. 

“Oh God, did I hurt you?” Root worried her bottom lip between her teeth, eyes watery like she was going to cry. She reached out to touch Shaw’s neck. Shaw didn’t move away, allowing the examination. 

“I will heal,” Shaw reassured her, “So will you. The nightmares will go.” They would go quicker with a treatment from the Red Room. 

“I’m so sorry,” Root apologized, hand covering her mouth, “I... Ivan was...” There were no excuses that would explain the trauma they had been put through. 

“I know.” Shaw nodded; she knew what the nightmares were like because she had them too. They were incessant and damaging and horrible. But they had to live with it. Because they were broken. Because they would never be whole again, “Come back to bed.” 

Root looked up at her and for a beat it looked like she was going to kiss Shaw. But then she shook her head, “I think I’m gonna get some air.” 

“I’ll come,” Shaw said, moving to grab her jeans from the floor before Root’s hand was on her arm. 

“Alone. I’m going to go alone, I think,” Root whispered. 

“Oh,” the syllable escaped her mouth and she closed her slack mouth to a clench, watching Root’s figure disappear out of the door. 

Shaw ignored the concerned look from Reese as she settled herself on to the chair.   
Root would be okay, eventually. She didn’t need Shaw’s worries or sympathies. She needed them to find her Papa. Then everything would be okay.   
Shaw didn’t know if she believed that, but it’s what she repeated in her mind throughout the night until a dreamless sleep came. 

 

* * *

 

Root silently slipped back into the room, ringing her hands together nervously when she spotted Shaw, who had fallen asleep on the chair. The bruise from Root’s hands still looked fresh on Shaw’s neck, and she tried to swallow down her guilt. 

She was a liability to Shaw and Reese like this. No matter how much she wanted to forget what the Red Room did to her, she was still this tortured little girl who was made to kill.   
Nothing would change that. 

She ground her teeth as she searched in the bag, pulling out her restraints. 

She lowered herself on to the bed and handcuffed herself to the bedpost.  

A choked sob threatened to escape her but she bit down on her lip until she was sure she tasted blood.   
She would never be whole. She would never be an actual human being. Her life belonged to the Red Room, she was nothing. She’d always be nothing. 

Reese must have heard her for he shuffled closer, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as a sob wracked through her body, tears leaking on to the pillow. 

This was who she was. 

No amount of wishing and hoping would change her into anything else. 

“Flights are booked for the morning, get some sleep,” Reese whispered, kissing her forehead, the rough stubble feeling so wrong against her skin. 

Root wiped the tears away, wiped the evidence of her emotion away, and flashed an appreciative smile to Reese. 

“Can you not tell Shaw, please,” Root asked, tentatively. 

“About you crying?” Root nodded, “Okay. Just... sleep. We have a big fight ahead of us.” 

Sleep would solve everything. Because the next day they would be in Poland finding her Papa. 

Papa would save her. 

Papa would love her. 

And she would love him. If she was even capable of that emotion. 

Like a machine, the Red Room had to break her. Little did they know, that's what made her care about people. And caring about people could get her through anything. It would get her through everything. 


	11. White Knight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Find what you love and let it kill you._  
>  ~ Charles Bukowski

They had made it over the seas to Poland easily thanks to Root’s skills and Shaw’s cache. 

They were a good team, it was revealed. Well, aside from last night. Shaw clenched her jaw and tried not to think about how that was the second time she had been choked by Root.   
And not in the good way. 

She figured it wasn’t weakness being able to feel, but in fact strength. Because Root was able to commit all these acts while still having the anchors of feeling around her heart.   
Strength. Root was strong.   
Shaw was the weak one for refusing to feel. 

“No progress on finding the Polish Resistance,” Root reported. 

She was sat beside Shaw in the car as Reese drove, typing away furiously on the keyboard. 

She had been reporting her progress (or lack thereof) every half hour, never seizing to sleep apart from on the plane. It was getting obsessive. Like she thought they could find her Papa if they found the Polish Resistance.   
There was a warmth in her chest as she thought about what she’d said a few days ago.  _I promise._    
Like Black Widows made promises. Like they had the ability to guarantee safety or decide anything for themselves. 

But Root was fragile. And it was up to Shaw to protect her. Because she would do the same.

Reese opened the window and a cold chill passed through the three of them.   
Shaw handed Root the last granola bar to chew on until the next half hour rolled up and she, yet again, reported to not have anything.

Root had hooked up the mobile phone they had stolen from the guy in Chicago and she was using an algorithm to see the location of the cell towers it had connected to. It seemed to be concentrated in the north of Lublin, so that’s where they were headed.   
Of course, the information could be wrong. But Shaw trusted in Root’s abilities. 

The Polish roads were different to those in America, those in Belarus too. It seemed more isolated, like the Soviet Union had left it in tatters and it was never built back up. 

“Something’s wrong,” Reese stated from the driver’s seat. 

“What?” Shaw asked, looking around. 

The roads weren’t densely populated, hardly any cars passed by them. Come to think of it _, no_ cars had passed them in a while. It was nothing but bare streets and empty shop fronts. 

Reese stepped on the brakes and the car skidded to a stop, “They’ve evacuated a block radius.” 

Time seemed to have stood still, frozen, like the weather. 

An ominous feeling of dread began to overtake the car and Shaw gulped down the urge to run. 

She ground her teeth, “Who has the resources for this?” 

“S.H.I.E.L.D, the Red Room, the Polish Resistance – take your pick,” Root replied as she stuffed her laptop back in her bag and got out her two guns. 

“Are we really gonna fight our way out of this? We can’t even see the threat yet,” Reese said disbelievingly. He didn’t have the guts of a Black Widow. He was too cautious. 

“Be a hell of a way to go,” Root said, arching her eyebrow. 

“Yeah, don’t be a wimp, Reese,” Shaw rolled her eyes and clicked the safety off her weapon, “Step on it.” 

Reese squared his shoulders and, just as a vehicle skidded into view on the road, stepped on the gas pedal, throwing the car forward. 

Root hung herself out of the window and shot at the vehicle in front's tires. Shaw shot at the small fleet behind them. 

Shaw heard the blow of tires and then a squealing; the front car was down. 

Root turned her attention to the gathering behind them. 

Did it look as awesome as it felt? The both of them hanging out their respective windows, shooting round after round at the enemy, speeding through the small streets of a foreign city. It must have looked like an art piece. 

The Black Widows and their Trusty Knight. 

Abram Arkhipov would be weeping in his grave. 

The scene smelled like gunpowder and action and danger and Shaw wanted it to last forever. 

There were bullets rippling past Shaw’s head but she didn’t care because she felt  _alive_. 

This is who she is. This is who she’s meant to be. She’s meant to be scared for her life, she’s meant to be fighting. 

The high didn’t last – it never did in these situations. 

Eventually, the car stalls (damn Europeans and their manual vehicles). 

Eventually, they run out of ammo (damn Reese for not packing enough). 

Eventually, a bullet nicks her in the shoulder (god _damnit_ ). 

She felt herself slipping back into the back of the car, felt her head meet hands,  _Root’s_ hands. 

And then they’re on her shoulder, prodding and poking until Root groaned and alerted Reese. 

The engine faltered as it failed to start, but the sound blurred into one with the shouts, the emptying of machine fire on their vehicle, the blood pumping in her ears. 

 _It’ll be fine._ She’s survived much worse than this. 

The windshield shattered and she felt Root’s body cover her own, though a shard of glass pierced her hand. 

She tried not to think about how her father died in a car crash. Tried not to think about his face right before he died. 

He probably felt this same pain she was feeling now. Unlikely, but it made Shaw feel a warmth in her chest. 

She shut her eyes. 

So much for an Arkhipov painting.  

Root gripped her cheeks, forcing her eyes open again. 

She saw her lips move, but couldn’t hear the words. 

Shaw looked down at herself and assessed the situation – a streak of blood followed a tear in her shoulder; when she tried to move her arm, it protested painfully. The bullet was probably still inside her. That would be a bitch to heal. If she made it out of this alive.   
She glanced at Root, who had broken glass in her hair, yet had never looked so beautiful. 

She was so steadfast, so reliant on the notion that she couldn't feel emotion, but if Shaw was being honest, she could tell it was happening. Slowly but surely, like a chisel against marble, a crack in her armor, Shaw was feeling.

And she understood this particular feeling. It was attraction and desire and... love. 

She had to tell Root.

“You’re infuriating,” Shaw whispered, but the voice sounded so loud in her hears. She wasn’t sure if Root heard with all the commotion.  

Shaw gagged, the pain making her feel sick. She couldn’t continue. She wanted to say how Root was infuriating, how she had bulldozed into her life with little to no warning and shook up everything she thought she knew.

She wanted to say how much she valued the last few weeks, because they had been the best, most exciting weeks of her life. Because she could remember them. Because she had hope of a better future. And it was down to Root's unbridled optimism. 

She reached up and touched Root’s lips with her fingers, smearing blood on her chin.

A stain on the perfect canvas in front of her.

But Root was messy, with a collection of personalities and identities to sort through. That's what made her more beautiful. Because, through those façades, Shaw had gotten a glimpse of the pain. The pain made her human, it made all of them human.

Root wasn't a machine. She was human. So was Shaw. They were the same. They weren't marble. They were something. They belonged to themselves.

And with that freedom they had flourished into something indescribable. The Resistance. Friends - no,  _family._

She tried a smile, hoping it didn't look like a grimace.

Root’s attention wasn’t on her, though. She was still firing her gun, reaching over to grab another clip from the bag.

It was enchanting, to watch Root protect them with an elegance Shaw could only dream of. It was as enchanting as it was infuriating, but her eyes were slipping closed.

She shook her head and forced them open again, refusing to succumb to a peaceful rest.

Maybe it was better this way. She wouldn't be appearing weak. She wouldn't be tarnishing the image she'd built up for herself as the unfeeling, stoic rock.

She was never supposed to have a happy ending. From the car crash that gave her purpose, to now - bleeding out in the backseat of a stolen vehicle, surrounded by people she cared for - Shaw understood why she was made.

To fight for something she believed in. She was willing to sacrifice her life to save others in the Red Room. Not because she had an obligation, not even because Root said they should, although it had been that for a while. No, it was because she couldn't see another child be hurt by the Red Room. Frailty. That was Shaw's weakness.

She was the defender of the weak. And, now? Now, she was useless.

This was why Black Widows didn’t wish for anything. Because, one way or another, they ended up dead. 

There was a bang. 

And pain. 

The world shook but Shaw’s eyes were falling closed again and she couldn’t bring herself to care. 

She couldn’t tell you what happened next, all she remembered was the warmth in her heart, reminding her that she  _could_ feel. That she loved Root.

And then everything went black. 

 

* * *

 

Root’s eyes flew open, though she was still blind. She blinked; there must have been a blindfold or a bag over her head. 

She shifted, wincing as her muscles groaned in protest at the movement.   
Everything came back to her – being in Poland again, an explosion,  _Shaw!_  

Oh, God, there was so much blood all over the back seat of the car, where Shaw had been sprawled. If she was stronger, she would have thought to wrap something around Shaw’s wound so they could get out of there. But she was burdened by emotion. 

Instead she had to watch Shaw bleed out, lying unconscious on the seat, while flash grenades flew through the broken windshield. She bit her lip and willed the image out of her mind. 

She moved her arms, not surprised at the restraints binding her to the chair she was sat on. 

She heard shuffling in the near distance and bit her tongue before curiosity got the better of her. 

“Shaw? Is that you?” She whispered, voice sounding much weaker than she intended it to. 

Her ears prickled as she strained to hear the breaths of at least two people. 

“Root?” Asked a deep, masculine voice. 

She breathed a sigh of relief, “Reese, where’s Shaw?”  

“I can’t see anything, how the hell am I meant to know? You’re the one with magical powers,” Reese bit out. 

Root rolled her eyes, though they couldn’t see each other, “I’m not a fairy godmother, John.” 

“Oh, and don’t I know it.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“We wouldn’t be stuck in here if it wasn’t for you and your need for a family. He’s dead, he died in the fire, we  _all_ know that.” 

Root scoffed, incredulously. How dare he? 

“Guess what, Root? You already have a family. Us. We care about you like a family should. Or we did, before you got her killed.” 

“That wasn’t my fault,” Root muttered out, though she wasn’t entirely convinced. 

“She followed you here. We both followed you here because you said we would stop the Red Room. But no, we had to do what you said. You got her killed.” 

“She isn’t dead,” Root replied, feeling tears welling up in her eyes. She wanted Shaw to love her, she never thought she would get her killed.

She was just kidding herself if she thought they would ever work. Shaw didn't love.

“You're naïve if you believe that.” 

Root ignored him in favor of trying to shuffle her way out of her restraints. 

Shaw wasn’t dead.   
She couldn’t be. 

She heard footsteps and seized her movements, going rigid. But then she relaxed into the chair; if they sensed fear, they had already won. 

The steps sounded like church bells in the silence, and then the hood was taken off her head and a hand gripped her face. 

Root’s features hardened under the pressure, being reminded of Ivan.   
She killed him. She was a killer. And now she'd gotten Shaw killed, arguably the only person she actually loved. 

She was strong enough to withstand anything these people put her through after seeing Shaw's body slumped lifelessly. 

Root huffed, distastefully, “You think you’ll be the one to break me? You're all pathetic.” 

“Shut your mouth before I shut it for you,” the soldier, who held them captive, spoke in Polish with conviction, though she could still hear an English twang coming through. 

He was white as the snow, had the face of a young boy, despite the strong jaw and army-style dirty blonde hair.   
His eyes, though, were glassy, unfeeling. 

“ _Please_.” Root scoffed and spoke in English, “I have watched my own house burn down, seen my father perish in the fire. I have been whipped and tortured and trained to kill. Nothing you can do will make me talk.” 

“Let’s see about that,” he pushed himself away from her, grabbing the tools of his trade. 

Root laughed as he pulled out a vial of God knows what, “Truth serum? How mundane.” 

“Barbiturate and amphetamine, creates a rollercoaster of sorts,” he corrected her, his language slipping from Polish to English to reveal a very posh accent, “Scared yet?” 

“Terrified,” she grinned, unsettlingly. 

“You’ll be singing like a songbird in no time,” he prepared the injection. 

In her peripheral, she saw Reese struggling to get out of his restraints. No Shaw.   
She couldn’t be dead. She hadn’t survived these years of torture to be killed by a single bullet. 

The needle pierced her skin and she let out a sigh. 

“The wife of a Nazi concentration camp Commander – Bertha Schwebel – she liked to kill prisoners. Skim the tattoos off their bodies and keep them as trophies.” 

Root shrugged, “Charming.” 

“I interrogated her when she was captured,” he bragged, wielding a scalpel, “and in less than 24 hours, I had her spilling every little secret she ever knew. You killed my comrade in Chicago. I will kill your comrade in return.” He gestured at Reese with the scalpel, “Unless you tell me what I want to know.” 

Root ground her teeth, her mind becoming foggy due to the injection, “I’m not some Nazi harlot. Do with me what you wish, but I won’t break.” She was marble. 

“Lambert, stop,” commanded another man. 

Lambert, apparently, sighed and dropped the needle, “Lucky for you, darling, we won’t be finding out if that’s true. Not today, anyway.” 

“Report to your superior immediately,” said the other man, coldly.  

The older man, he wasn’t S.H.I.E.L.D, approached them slowly. He wasn’t old like Ivan, but he wasn’t the same age as them, either. He wore civilian clothing, different to the soldier’s uniform the other man had donned, though there was still a machine gun hanging off his belt. 

The man lifted his cap to reveal bright hazel eyes she could recognise from anywhere. 

Root gasped. 

The man smiled softly at her, “You came home.”  

That’s when she passed out for the second time that day. 


	12. Black Veil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing._  
>  ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

As soon as he undid her restraints, she flew into her Papa’s arms, and he tightened his own around Root’s waist.  
It felt like home, like every single doubt she’d had about herself was disappearing with one single tether to her old life. This man knew her, he knew what she was like when she was younger, what she liked doing. Who she loved.  
Her Papa knew everything about her. She was whole again.

Root shook her head. But wasn’t he dead? Didn’t he die in the fire?

Root’s eyes scanned over his face, catching on a burn mark on the side of his cheek. She thought it was bigger, but that was probably her mind playing tricks on her, still weakened by the drugs.

“You’re aliv– how are you alive?” Root asked.

This was wrong, it was all wrong. Why was he here? Why did he know the person interrogating her?

“My dear, we have lots to discuss,” Aleksander smiled warmly at her, and for maybe an hour she forgot about Shaw.

It turned out that Papa worked for the Polish Resistance. He was a doctor for them, before the fall of the Soviet government.

They were sat in a dining room, and Root listened raptly, captivated by Papa’s stories about the Polish Resistance, Reese hovering in the background after Root asked for him to be released.

There was war, action, romance.

Her mother had been killed during the protests, when Root was just a toddler. When her heart hadn’t been blackened by the Red Room.

It sounded too good to be true – all the new things she was learning about herself.

“I worked in the operating theatres for a while in Berlin, that’s where the Polska Walçzaca needed me. I heard rumors of the Red Room,” Aleksander smiled stiffly.

“Where your daughter was held captive,” Reese offered his input with a sneer, obviously not trusting him.

Aleksander nodded once, “The Soviet Union needed intellectuals, scholars, doctors. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I worked as a surgeon in the Red Room for many years, until you and your friends started your crusade against them. The Red Room went underground and I found solace again with the Polish Resistance.”

“You did the operations. So, you did the graduation operation, too?” Root’s eyes fell closed as she let it sink in. Her _own_ Papa had taken her ability to reproduce.

That's why she was able to feel – because Papa kept her emotions.

“I thought it would make you all stronger.”

“You don’t get to choose that for someone. We should have free will.”

“I know, I'm sorry, _doch_. I knew no better.”

There was that fateful word again - _doch_. The feeling blossoming on her chest wasn’t a desire for family anymore, though. No, it was an emptiness. Disappointment. Because her Papa was wrong in supporting the Red Room.

“I'm not defending their methods, my dear, just the outcome of their missions. The Red Room did well in their advancement of the human body. As a doctor, it was all fascinating.”

“Why are you working for the Polish Resistance, then, if you support the work of the Red Room?” Reese questioned, taking a threatening step forward, his voice rough and calloused from lack of water.

Aleksander seemed to find humor in this, as he chuckled deeply, “A doctors job is never done. My travels happened to lead me back here again.”

“I don't believe you,” Reese took another step forward, until he was standing in front of Aleksander.

“Where's my girlfriend? Where's Shaw?”

“Girlfriend? I'm not familiar with this term,” Aleksander looked confused again, his eyes darting between the two of them.

“The other woman in the car,” Root elaborated.

“She was dead when we got you out,” he looked sad at that, “For that, I am sorry. If I’d have known it was you, I wouldn’t have let them fire on you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Papa looked confused, “Yes. The world is a scary place, my dear. But I vow to protect you from _anything_.”

“Forgive me, Papa, but this seems a bit far-fetched,” Root revealed, hearing Reese breathe a sigh of relief. Like he had any right to input on this topic.

“I don't expect you to believe me, not right off the bat and especially not after the way Lambert treated you,” he replied, smiling as he rounded the table and took her hands in his, “Let me prove it to you.”

“How?”

“Stay with me for a week, I will prove to you that I'm who I say I am.”

Stay with Papa? Of course!  
It would be just like the old days, whispering secrets into the night while her Papa pretended to be asleep.

And she would wake up to the smell of freshly baked bread and stuff it into her face until Papa reprimanded her for her manners.  
Like the good old days.

Even just being here in the presence of Papa was making her remember. She wondered how much she could learn about herself being with him.

But no matter how much Root wanted that, she couldn't forget her mission, even if they were down one team member.

“I can't stay for long, we have a mission,” she ducked her head in shame.

She shouldn’t be feeling this shame, she had done nothing wrong. Her father was in the wrong for killing Shaw.

Her allegiances lay with taking down the Red Room and everything they stood for.  
She could overlook the thoughts of her Papa, though. Now he worked for the Resistance too. That had to count for something.

“Oh,” Papa looked downhearted for a second, but his features brightened with a smile, “What kind of mission?”

“ _Root_ ,” Reese warned her with a glare.

“It’s fine, John, I trust him,” Root bit out, “We’re going after the Red Room. Taking revenge on them for doing this to girls like me.”

Papa started for a moment but then sat down on the table in front of Root, “I can help, you know. I can get more weapons, um, we can provide safe passage? Please, Samantha, it is our _destiny_ to fight together. For, if not for divine intervention, we wouldn’t have found our way back to each other. Just let me fight with you.”

Root smiled, “That would be nice, thank you.”

“And you will stay here tonight?”

Root laughed, “One night.”

 

 

  
“This is stupid,” Reese complained when he cornered Root after she had stepped out of the shower, “This is stupid and I can’t understand why you’re trusting him.”

“Because he’s my father, Reese. I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” Root put on Zach’s old hoodie, though it smelled like gunpowder. Still, it radiated the comfort of normalcy.

Reese had the decency to wince.

“The Red Room will come after him too once they realize he’s working with us.” Root continued.

“He isn’t working with us. And that’s _if_ he’s telling the truth.”

“You don’t get to do that,” Root rolled her eyes.

He frowned, “Do what?”

“Pretend to care. You’re just here for the money, which I don’t have by the way.” Root pulled back the covers on the bed that Papa had told her she could sleep in. Reese was sleeping across the hall, or he was meant to be.

“Root. We’ve already lost one team-mate. I’m in this till the end. Maybe it started because of the money, but I’m staying because of the cause.”

Root settled herself down on the bed, “John, please. If you want to leave, then leave. I don’t need you here.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Reese warned from the foot of the bed.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Shaw wouldn’t want you to do this,” Reese tried.

“Shaw is dead. I killed her. I’m not getting anyone else I care about killed,” she turned away from him and relaxed back on the small, stiff bed.

She needed her cuffs, but she would wait for Reese to leave before she went and found some. He would think her weak, weaker than he already did. He would feel the need to protect her, like Shaw did.

She winced as she felt tears brimming in her eyes. She got Shaw killed. She was a monster.

Reese shook his head, “Why are you being so stubborn?”

“Because you’re not my family. You don’t need to pretend you care. I have someone who cares about me, now,” she raised her voice. It was her destiny to fight with Papa.

Reese matched her volume, “You don’t think Shaw cared?”

“Shaw was a sociopath, she cared for no one,” she whispered, though he picked up on it.

“She died for  _you_. For this movement.”

“Not on purpose.”

“Do you _hear_ yourself, Root?” Reese sounded exasperated.

He was there for the money. He didn’t care about her. Neither did Shaw. Papa cared for her. Papa would love her in the way the team couldn’t.

She remembered a few weeks ago, when she had vowed not to get attached.  
Look where they were now – one had gotten killed, another was doubting her. She had never created this Resistance thinking she would make it out alive.

She created this movement because she wanted revenge on HYDRA. Only one person in her life wanted to help her – Papa.

Reese was getting in the way. Shaw was a distraction.

She had a mission.

“Leave.”

“What, ‘cos you’re scared of the truth – that you had a family before Aleksander?”

“I told you to leave.”

“When you end up dead, your body lying across the streets surrounded by chaos and destruction, I’ll be there. Even if you don’t want me, I’ll be in the background protecting you. Because that’s what friends do. They have your back.”

Root growled, “Get out of here.”

“She told you to leave, son.” Aleksander revealed himself at the door.

Reese didn’t shift his focus from Root. She was never one to back down and matched his glare with her own. Until a tear finally slid down her cheek and reminded her of the weakness of emotion.

She wiped the evidence away with the pad of her thumb and shook her head, “I don’t want you here, Reese. Please. Just go.”

Reese sighed and left silently, not even acknowledging her Papa.

“I’m sorry if I caused tension,” Papa said slowly as he crept into the room.

Root shrugged her shoulders, feeling her bottom lip tremble until tears flooded into her eyes.

She felt them track down her cheeks but couldn’t find it in herself to wipe them away.  
Papa shushed her and gathered her in his arms, stroking her hair.

He started humming a familiar melody and her mind strained to place it.

“ _Dobrej nocy, i sza, do bialego śpij dnia_.” Papa whispered softly as she leaned back on the bed again, resting her head on the pillow, “ _śpij dziecino, oczka zmruż, śpij do wschodu rannych zorz. Mama zaś będzie tu. Śpiewać piosnki do snu. Mama zaś będzie tu. Śpiewać piosnki do snu._ ”

Root translated it to be a Polish nursery rhyme.

“Your mother used to sing that to you when you were a baby,” Papa said with a smile on his face once he finished. She could see it in the limited light and it felt so perfect.

“I want to be stronger.” She said, her chest aching with feeling, “I want to feel powerful, but not feel at all.”

Shaw had it easy. She didn’t care about anyone. Maybe not caring would make all this pain go away.

“What are you asking of me?”

“You were their doctor. I want you to make me like a Red Room agent again. But this time, I want you to actually take away my feelings.”

Papa nodded, “It is better this way. Your friend was strong, the one who died. Now you shall be as strong as her.”

Root closed her eyes and gulped down the urge to cry more. Crying would get her nowhere.

She was no one. She was nothing. She needed to be nothing to take down the Red Room.

She was doing this for Shaw.

She fingered the receipt in her pocket, the one she’d taken out of the trash in the hotel in New Glarus. She had near enough memorized every word Shaw had written on the receipt. _You don’t have to be marble to be strong_. That’s where she was wrong. Because strength came in not feeling.

Strength came in Resistance.

Root was the Resistance, even if she was on her own now.

Someone kissed her forehead and Root remembered she wasn’t alone. She had Papa, she had a family. She had everything she ever wanted. So why did she feel so hollow?

 

* * *

 

Shaw grunted when a bright light shone in her eye. She had never been philosophical, but apparently it was true when they said they saw a white light at the end of the tunnel.

Shaw blinked her eyes a couple times, until she started.

She wasn’t dead.

She was alive.

She grabbed the nearest thing next to her, which happened to be a body, and pulled it flush against her.

She bared her teeth, failing to keep the fear out of her voice, “Where the hell am I?”


	13. The Soldier in White

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are stronger at the broken places._  
>  ~ Ernest Hemingway

A shudder of panic and annoyance scampered up Shaw’s spine as her eyes darted around the small room. 

It wasn’t the Red Room. It wasn’t the Polish Resistance. 

There was machinery surrounding the bed, enclosing them in the claustrophobic room. A set of blood in a tray was on the table to the side and Shaw glanced at her arm, at the dot of blood escaping her.

This didn’t seem like a regular hospital, for the nurse in her arms was built like a goddamn truck, and she could feel his muscles rippling under her grip. 

“Ms Shaw, calm down,” the nurse said, straining to keep his breathing under control. 

“How do you know my name?” Shaw looked around and grabbed the injection next to her bed, pushing it against the nurse’s neck. 

No one had seemed to notice the commotion, for no one came to surround her with their machine guns ready, there were no little girls trained to kill. 

“Please, stop, you’ll ruin your stitches,” the nurse tried again, struggling against Shaw’s iron grip. 

Her eyes were wild as she glanced around the room again. 

A door swung open at the far side of the room and the next thing she knew there was a cold pain in her neck. 

She touched her neck, where a cold sensation was diffusing through her body. 

She should have seen it coming, the bag thrown over her head. 

She struggled against it, but then her hands were tied and  _goddamnit._ She dropped the needle to the floor, hearing it clatter. 

She collapsed with a snarl, still holding on to the nurse, bringing them both down to the floor. 

She was dragged somewhere, she counted the seconds and direction just in case she needed to run. 

But her mind was hazy. 

Had they given her drugs? What was that freezing cold feeling stirring in her body? 

She was unceremoniously thrown on to a chair and the bag was yanked off her head by a brunette woman.   
Shaw would have called her hot, if not for the pain in her shoulder. And neck. And head. 

She wondered how many hours she’d been in that recovery room. Not long enough for her bullet wound to have healed. 

“You’re making a big mistake,” she bit out, struggling against her restraints. 

She had been put in a dark room, with a table in the middle. There were no two-way mirrors she could see.   
The man in front of her was wearing a charcoal suit, like a businessman. She wanted to strangle him with his tie. 

The man in the suit regarded her. Shaw narrowed her eyes so the man spoke, “Sorry for the lack of finesse.” 

“Who’re you supposed to be?” She snarled, clenching her jaw as the confusion began to ebb away and her senses came back to her. 

They hadn’t killed her. They had saved her. So, they were going to use her. 

“I’m Phil Coulson. Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., and I could use a woman of your abilities on my team,” Coulson said, with a fatherly smile. 

Root used to work for S.H.I.E.L.D., so did Reese. 

Shaw shook her head, “Why would I believe you? As far as I know,  _you_ were the ones shooting at me and my friends.” 

Oh, God, what happened to Root? She remembered being shot, she remembered an explosion, and then… this. 

“The Polish Resistance we’re shooting at you, you’re lucky we were tracking your movements since Chicago.” 

“So, you expect me to fight for you because, what? ’Cause you saved me?” Shaw asked; that’s what Root did. Shaw saved her, and it was expected of them to stick together. But Shaw wasn’t like Root. Shaw didn’t trust so easily, she didn’t let her heart make decisions. 

She didn't have a heart to begin with.

“So, I’m a guinea pig.” Better than being dead.  _Root_. 

“We are weeding out HYDRA. If you join the team, we could use your unique knowledge to deal with Red Room agents,” Coulson explained, and then added with another smile, “We also do Taco Tuesday.” 

Shaw’s stomach rumbled at the promise of food and she scowled at its treachery. Well, that decided it, then. 

“Is it Tuesday?” Shaw asked, mentally taking in her state – she was dressed in a hospital gown, but she looked healthy enough. 

“Wednesday,” Coulson admitted. 

Shaw’s scowl deepened, “What food is it today, then? Or am I supposed to just fight on an empty stomach.” 

They wanted to take down HYDRA. The Red Room belonged to HYDRA. 

“Well, we need to do a few more tests before we send you out into the field, but that can wait. All we need from you for now is a name – who were the doctors in the Red Room?” 

The man? The one who had only recently come into her dreams? No, she didn’t have a name for him, couldn’t really remember his face other than the burn mark on his cheek. No, they needed to get to the woman – Koslova. 

“Koslova,” she said simply, staring straight ahead at Coulson.

“Is... that a first name or a last name?” Coulson pressed. 

Shaw sighed, deciding not to answer. They could figure it out on their own, she couldn’t do their  _whole_ jobs for them. 

“Okay, well, I can get Skye to bring you some food,” Coulson said as he retreated out of the room. 

Shaw turned to the other woman in the room, the hot one, and glared at her. 

“So, what, you’re supposed be some kinda badass?” Skye asked, rounding the table so she could sit on the table beside Shaw. 

She clenched her jaw, shifting her gaze to the front of the room again. 

“You don’t look like much, though this Cyborg Assassin look is  _definitely_ working for you,” Skye continued, tucking Shaw’s loose hair behind her ear. 

Shaw flinched and grabbed Skye’s hand, glaring deeply at the other woman. 

Skye merely grinned, like she was waiting for her to snap. 

Shaw grumbled and threw her hand away.   
She shouldn’t rise to the bait; these people had saved her. 

Shaw turned her head slightly, in order to look at the woman properly. 

Dark brown hair tumbled on to her shoulders in loose ringlets, not unlike Root’s. There was a small cut on Skye’s cheek which looked fresh. She wanted to ask about it, but that would imply she cared. Which she did not. She didn't have feelings. 

Instead she remained silent. 

She observed. 

This woman had faint mascara on her eyes, fainter bags underneath them. Like she was exhausted by the world’s cruelty. 

Shaw understood her. The world  _was_ cruel. And dark and unforgiving. She didn’t even know if Root was dead or not, that was the worst part. The not knowing. Not having closure. 

But that’s just the way the world worked. 

Skye seemed to soften, no longer maintaining the annoying façade, “Look, I don’t know exactly what happened to you, but I sure as hell know we could use you on our team.” 

Shaw clenched her jaw. She had a team. She had Root and Reese and  _they_  were her team. 

“I used to be like you,” Skye continued in a more sincere tone, “more transient than permanent. But S.H.I.E.L.D. became the family I never had.” 

Family. Root wanted a family. Shaw didn’t. 

“Whatever your scars are,” Skye gaze lingered on her before she moved back to the opposite side of the table, “I know for a fact that the Red Room tortured you and made you into this unfeeling block of cement… but you need to fight back. It’s how we move on.” 

Shaw snapped, her eyes locking on to lighter brown ones. Like Root’s.  

She seethed, “I don’t want to fight.” 

Skye shook her head slowly, “Of course you do. It’s in your blood.” 

Shaw worked her jaw and tried not to notice how Skye’s eyes seemed to soften even more. This was as stupid. This interrogation or interview or recruitment was just stupid. 

The walls felt like they were closing in. 

And it was dangerous. Because Shaw was scared. She was scared about this new place, was scared at how this woman seemed to be looking at her – like she was an actual person. It wasn’t what she was used to. She didn’t like it.  

“You’re an asset to this team, Shaw. I promise you, we will take down the Red Room.” 

Her promises didn’t mean anything. Sk–  _this agent_  couldn’t guarantee her anything. 

She was being played. 

She launched across the table and grabbed the agent’s throat, hauling her on to the wall and slamming her head against the surface. 

She tightened her hand, feeling the bones crack under the pressure. 

The agent didn’t counter her attack, but smiled indignantly. 

Shaw wondered what Skye could do if she let herself fight. 

But right now, she was hungry. 

“Didn’t Coulson promise me food?” 

Skye’s eyebrow raised and Shaw huffed, releasing her. Skye smiled and frowned at the same time, probably still trying to figure Shaw out. 

 _Get in line_ , Shaw thought. 

But this was who she was. She was a fighter, though she didn’t want to fight. It was what she was good at. It was who she was.  

And the fight wasn’t over yet. 

Get in. Take down the Red Room. Get out. 

Simple. 

 

* * *

 

Inhale. Exhale. 

Her arms ached. Her chest was constricting and heart was palpitating.   
She was stood up, arms pulled behind her, restrained. There were wires connected to her head, needles pumping some sort of liquid into her bloodstream. 

Her eyes were pried open, and she tried to breathe slowly. 

“It is better this way, my dear. You will become who you were meant to be,” the voice, the same monotone voice that had been taunting her for hours, had come back again, speaking in Russian, "Surrender... and you will find meaning.”

Inhale. Exhale. 

“Surrender, and you will find release,” the voice continued. 

Her mind was urging her to fight it; but her body was exhausted. 

She was ready to succumb to whatever this man wanted from her.   
But this wasn’t right. For some reason her brain wasn’t allowing her to remember, it wasn’t  _right_. 

She fiddled with her hand restraints again, feeling the screw come loose.  _Finally!_ She pulled her arm free. 

She dug the nails of her fingers into the flesh of her palm, trying to gauge the extent of her numbness. She could still feel; it was okay.   
Why was that okay? 

She pressed her eyes shut, wanting to smack her head on the nearest wall and  _remember._  

Inhale. Exhale.

What had she forgotten? 

She heard a tutting, and then her wrist was pulled firmly back into place. 

The man came into view and she could have sworn a look of regret washed over his features. She wanted to call out, but she knew this man was here to hurt her.    
There was a burn mark on his cheek, and she found an odd recollection in the deepest recess of her mind urging her to stop listening.   
_Stop!_  

“Do you think she cared about you? A woman who would kill you if she got the order. No, my dear, you have found your purpose. And what’s best is that you comply.” 

 _Compliance_ _will be rewarded._  

 _Are you ready to comply?_  

The same sentences. Same technique. 

The electricity caught her by surprise this time, and she ground her teeth together to stop the scream threatening to escape. 

This time, though, it was different. It was as though a switch had been flipped in her mind. Everything she’d ever felt, everything she thought, it was all disappearing until there was one goal in mind – to fight. 

She was nothing more than a simple soldier. 

Compliance was key. Compliance would be rewarded. 

She had to complete the mission. 

What was the mission? 

The electric pulses stopped and her body went slack against her restraints. 

A series of images flashed through her mind – black and white, like they were decades old. A woman... with dark brown hair in loose ringlets that framed her face, struggling to carry a suitcase up a block of stairs.   
And then a man, whose body she clung to like a child in a cold, dingy motel room. 

She couldn’t be certain. 

Inhale. Exhale.

A man came into view. With a burn mark on his cheek. And guarded but strangely optimistic eyes. He jutted out his jaw, squared his shoulders, and clasped his hands behind his back. 

She tilted her head to one side, her hair dropping to mask her vision. But she didn’t care. 

“Master?” Her voice sounded rough as she spoke, instinctively choosing Russian. 

The man nodded once but with little conviction. 

But then he said the words - “Are you ready to comply, Root?” - and she fixed her posture. 

Codename Root's face became a mask. She stared at nothing, face emotionless as he undid her restraints. 

“Happy to comply,” she said, the shape of the words feeling strange on her tongue, clumsy even. Unnatural.

This was the way the world ended.    
Not with a bang. But with an order. 

Codename Root wasn’t supposed to have a happy ending. 


	14. Scarlet Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Yes, this is me, but so what? She who was in me is gone, gone. I mumble furiously, insanely, Who was she? Who?_  
>  ~ Forugh Farrokhzad

Seven bases in three weeks.   
That felt like a win. 

Shaw was in the hangar of the plane, cleaning her weapon.   
She had been cleared for duty a few weeks ago, though her shoulder still ached. She rolled it, testing it out again. Nothing she couldn’t handle. 

She had been tearing down Red Room bases, with the help of a S.H.I.E.L.D. team, since she was cleared and it felt good. It felt good to be able to destroy her creators, those who made her kill people for their political gain.   
It felt good not to have any strings attached to her mind, pulling her along like a puppet in order to do their dirty work. 

She belonged to no one. 

She was not marble. And it did not matter. 

Because this was who she was – she was Bernard Cywinkski with the Warsaw Uprising, rising up to spite his Nazi oppressors; she was Cardinal Mindszenty, criticiser of the Soviet Union. She was a Black Widow, enemy of the Red Room. 

She felt someone’s presence behind her and sighed. 

“What?” She bit out, not shifting her attention from the machine gun in her hands. 

There were footsteps and then Reese sat down next to her, “No news?”  

Reese had re-joined S.H.I.E.L.D. a few days after she had been rescued; that was a big incentive for her to stay. He had pledged his unwavering allegiance to S.H.I.E.L.D. and Koennig, some small, plump agent, had cleared him for duty a couple weeks later. 

“She hasn’t contacted me, Reese,” Shaw clenched her jaw. 

“Maybe she can’t,” Reese suggested, grabbing the weapon out of her hands to clean it himself, “or she’s dead.” 

“Good riddance,” Shaw got off the floor to rearrange her arsenal. She needed to fiddle with something, unable to comprehend the fact that she cared for Root and Root had left her so easily. 

“You don’t mean that,” Reese said, following her. 

“If she wants to play happy families with her dad then who am I to stop her?”  

Reese had told her everything – about Root finding her Papa, about telling Reese to leave. And it hurt. Because Root was meant to be the glue holding them all together. 

She was meant to be strong, yet broken. Now she was just... broken.   
Well, Shaw didn’t know that for certain. For all she knew, Root could be poolside sipping on a mimosa (she seemed like the type) with her father in tow, without a second thought to whether Shaw had even survived the bullet. 

No. It was better this way. Someone ended up dying when they were around each other. 

Reese seemed to sense her staring a hole in the knife collection and he grunted softly. 

The conversation ended there, both of them enjoying the companionable silence. 

After another hour of brooding together, the pair made their way up to morning briefing, where the rest of the team was waiting for them. 

“Nice of you both to finally show,” Skye grumbled. 

“Bite me,” Shaw responded. 

“No biting, please,” Mac begged from the back of the room. 

Shaw joined him at the back of the room, Reese meandering off to stand with Agent May. 

Coulson entered the room and started to brief them on their next mission in Chechnya, where Whitehall, a HYDRA scientist, was rumoured to be turning girls into Black Widows. 

The mission was simple, it remained unchanged from when Shaw, Reese and Root had all been working together – get in. Take down the Red Room. Get out. 

 

* * *

 

Codename Root plunged the knife into the soldier’s neck and silently dropped the body to the floor. 

 ** _< Fingerprint identification lock on the next door> _**Her Master fed the information through her ear piece. 

She reached in her pocket and pulled out the thin sheet of film, laying it on the soldier’s hand and then placing it on the scanner, tricking out the fingerprint reader. She felt full of purpose as she strode through the corridors of the base; purpose was better than feeling. Functional was better than free. 

She fired at anyone she crossed paths with. Codename Root had no feelings. There was clarity in this – she was doing this for the plan. She was pivotal to the plan. The world would be better for it. 

She hauled the bodies into a pile in the middle of the base in Chechnya. 

 **_< Red Room’s backup has arrived. Get to the extraction point immediately>_ ** 

Codename Root made her way to the extraction point despite the niggling in her mind making her think maybe she should stay. Maybe she should finish the job and burn the place to the ground, as were her original orders. 

Primary objective: Kill Whitehall 

Secondary objective: Kill Red Room agents 

But they weren’t her orders anymore. Now she had to get to the extraction point. 

In hindsight, she should have recognised that it was too quiet for a Red Room base. In hindsight, she should have done more than her single day of recon before she infiltrated. Maybe then she would have known S.H.I.E.L.D. were there, too. 

She saw a shimmering outline of the cloaked plane land somewhere in the distance and before she knew it was picking her way towards it, through the woods. 

She cradled her rifle in her arms and remained alert. The snow in Chechnya was like a blanket, it was largely untouched aside from the base she’d just taken down. 

The woods closed in on her and, for a second, she thought she’d been here before – trees towering over her, she was clinging to a pocket knife. She held a life between her hands.   
She remembered blood diffusing into snow. This was what she knew, and she knew too much. She was fraying at the edges; her memories were fracturing. She needed to forget. She needed to be torn apart and put back together. 

She didn't get to remove the memory from her mind, for there was shouting in the near distance, and shooting. 

Codename Root ducked for cover and hid behind the stump of a tree. Three little girls (Targets 1, 2 and 3) came into vision, riding on dirt bikes towards the cloaked plane, where two women and a man had exited. One of the women (Bike Chick) had dragged a motorcycle out of the plane and it roared to life. 

The Bike Chick smirked as the targets got closer and Root could do nothing but watch in awe as she led the girls astray. 

The man and Woman 2 from S.H.I.E.L.D. continued to shoot at the targets, no, at the tyres, but the targets were deploying countermeasures – grenades were thrown at the pair. 

Root needed to act. 

What was that proverb? The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Codename Root had no friends, yet she did have allies. 

Just as the grenades were set to erupt, Root tackled Woman 2 on to the floor, shielding her body with her own.   
Snow and debris scattered everywhere. 

Bike Chick skidded to a stop and shot the girls. 

The initial shock of her actions kicked in and Root’s immediate thought was worry for the woman her body was covering. 

She rolled off her and dusted herself off, clocking her surroundings to see the man having collapsed a foot away. He had a cut on his cheekbone, though it wasn’t bleeding too bad.   
She turned her attention back to Woman 2, who was trying to sit up, confusion ebbing on to her features. 

“Root...” The woman spoke, holding a tentative hand out to touch Root’s cheek, “It's you, it's really you.”

Woman 2 was small, and features soft, despite the look of shock clouding her eyes. She had dark brown eyes that seemed to convey an emotion Root was unfamiliar with... it looked like hope. 

This woman, she  _knew_ her. But that wasn’t possible, Codename Root knew no one but her Master. 

Woman 2's hand touched her cheek, and it looked as though she was going to kiss her. But then Root was engulfed in a tight hug by the other woman.

“I thought you were dead,” the woman spoke into her neck, breath tickling her there, a sharp contrast to their snowy surroundings, “The Resistance never dies, though, right?” 

The Resistance. She frowned, trying to figure out why that sounded so monumental in her mind. Why she got goosebumps a moment ago.

Root flinched away from the contact and held her gaze for a beat longer than necessary, before hearing a warning shot from behind her. 

The other woman, the one on the motorbike, was pointing a gun at her. It didn’t look like a normal one, for the tip was blue, and there seemed to be liquid inside it.   
A night-night gun. How did she know that? 

“No, stop, it's Root, we've found her!” Woman 2, the one that knew her, shouted, “Don't shoot, Skye."

“She's not the same Root you knew, Sam.” Skye said.

“I can get her back, just don't shoot,” Sam replied, turning her attention to Root, “The first time I saw you, you were at ballet class with Zach. The first time we had sex together all I wanted was to complete my mission - to kill you.”

Root glanced between them; she hadn’t been shot yet. The woman was moving closer as she spoke, she was nearly a foot away now.

“But when I tried to kill you I couldn't. We became a family, you me and Reese,” she gestured at the man behind, who had sat up and was watching the exchange, “We became The Resistance. Tell me you remember it.”

Root took the opportunity and launched the smoke from her gauntlet towards the one pointing the gun at her. Root covered her face with her arm.

The smoke screen erupted and she took one last look at the woman who knew her. She  _knew_ her! Root hadn’t thought that possible. 

“Root, wait! Please... Don't run, we can help.” Woman 2 coughed out.

“I don't know you," Codename Root had no friends or allies.

“Bullshit, tell me you don't feel this," the woman grabbed her by the neck and brought their lips together in a heated kiss. She bit into Root's bottom lip hard before running her tongue across it in a manner that seemed addictive.

The woman's mouth moved with precision, until Root was kissing her back, and it felt so familiar Root wanted to scream. She felt something rising inside her - it felt like a stream, no, a river. An ocean of memories just beyond reach.

Her heart rate quickened when the woman smiled into the kiss, but then Root's mind caught up to her body and she pushed the woman away.

She shook her head, trying to rid her mind of the woman's obsidian eyes that seemed to be probing her mind for a memory that refused to manifest.

“Was that supposed to be a thank-you for saving you from the grenades?“ Root said as she collected her weapon off the floor, ignoring the tingling on her lips.

“Stay with us, we'll help you. Trust me, like I trusted you all those months ago.“

“I'm dangerous,“ Root said. She was unpredicable. At least with her Master the only one's she could hurt were him or the Red Room agents she was going after. With these people, she could hurt one of them. They didn't deserve to be hurt, Root decided.

“Oh, please, you cried when you killed Ivan.“

Ivan. The Red Room. The treatments made her forget.

Root pressed her eyes shut tight. She knew one thing for certain - her Master was waiting for her. She trusted her Master. She didn't trust these people, no matter how good they were at kissing.

She punched the woman in the jaw, throwing two taser disks towards the other two.

She ran quickly, following the stream south. She padded across it to the other side. 

There were shouts behind her (“I'm begging you, Root, don't leave“, “We can help“), but she continued, refusing to further acknowledge the tightening in her chest as she thought about asking the woman who she was.   
She didn’t want to know.   
If she knew who she was, she would get emotions. All of this was better without emotions.  

The land steepened and she glanced at the mountain to the right of her. T-5 minutes. 

She grimaced as the cliff presented itself. Of course, she could have chosen an easier route to the extraction point, but she heard the spluttering of an engine behind her and knew Bike Girl was pursuing her.   
She made sure her knives were secure in her belt before she dug her foot into the first crevice she found and reached high to lodge her fingers in a crack. She climbed the cliff with ease, lunging to reach the top. She scrambled over the edge and dusted the snow off her clothes.  

She heard a curse from the bottom of the cliff but didn’t turn back. 

If she turned back, she knew curiosity would get the better of her and she would end up asking what else the woman knew about her. 

It was better without feelings, she reminded herself. She didn’t know if she believed it anymore.   
Her memories needed to be wiped. 

The wind cut against her face and blurred her vision, but she didn’t care.   
She’d had a memory. She’d met someone who cared for her. May have even _loved_ her. She touched her lips with her fingers, feeling the presence of the woman's kiss still fresh in her mind.

She needed to be wiped. 

She reached the clearing and got into the van, nodding her head in acknowledgement to her Master. She was thankful for the shelter and started to thaw out her numb body, blowing on her fingers until they stung like icicles were piercing through them. 

“You’re late,” her Master said. 

“I met a woman,” Codename Root revealed. She couldn’t lie to him, “She seemed to know me.” Knew her well enough to kiss her.

Her Master’s face remained a mask of nothingness. 

Root steeled herself, before she asked, “Who was she?”  

The van was silent.   
She thought she’d pushed it. That meant she wouldn’t get food tonight. Or maybe she would be whipped again; she reached below her clothes to finger at the scar on the bottom of her back. 

“A woman you used to know,” he said finally. 

Root’s heartbeat quickened, “ _Who?_ ” 

“You forget your place,” her Master snapped.

Codename Root bowed her head in shame. Stupid.

“You thought her to be a friend. That’s what she was trained to do – to make connections. It was just an act.” 

Codename Root had no friends. Root did. 

“What was her name?” 

Her Master sighed, “Shaw.” 

Shaw. 

Root startled, frowning as her fingers tentatively touched the receipt she’d kept in her coat pocket for as long as she could remember. 

Shaw, who thought steak tasted good with cheap beer. 

Shaw, who was an assassin for the Red Room. Shaw, who was friends with Root and Reese. 

She couldn’t let her Master know she remembered. 

But, of course, he found out. Or maybe he didn’t, and just thought she was due for another treatment. 

Either way, Codename Root woke sometime later, with her arms retrained behind her, and a pounding headache, with an emptiness that meant she had to start all over again to know her past. 

She woke to the whirring of hydraulics and bands restricting her movements. Her eyelids were heavy but she forced them open. Her mind was foggy, no doubt from some sort of drug. 

A jolt of pain shot through her body and her eyes darted around the room, spying the man in the corner. 

“Surrender and you will find meaning,” he said, “surrender and you will find release.” 

Her body slumped as she succumbed to her fate. 

“Happy to comply,” she said, her voice weak and broken. 

She remembered nothing. 

It was better this way. 


	15. Light in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> ~ Rabbi Tarfon

The wind rushed past Shaw’s head, a whistling sound flowing through her ears. 

She thought about how easy it would be to not deploy her parachute. They would call it an accident. They would say she didn’t mean to kill herself. 

But Shaw needed to live; if for nothing else but to find Root again. 

Root was alive. 

And Shaw cared enough to want to save her. 

She was no longer thinking of emotion as weakness, now it was strength. Root taught her that having emotions didn’t make a person weak, it made them stronger because they were able to kill with the anchors of feeling around them. 

Now Root was in trouble. And no matter what, Shaw would rescue her. Shaw would save her. Because that’s what friends did. 

They were going after the last target, and she was sure Root would be there too. Even if they didn’t work for the same people, they were both still fighting against the Red Room. They were the Resistance, as Root had dubbed them all those months ago. And the Resistance never died. 

She pulled the string and her parachute deployed, causing her descent into Igarka to slow. She controlled the parachute, landing in a clearing in the forest.   
She glanced to her right, where Reese was burying his chute and then masking any trace of them in the snow. 

She looked up at the sky – the snow would cover most of their tracks, anyway. 

They moved in sync across the snowy field, spotting the building at the end of the field.   
There was a cliff to the right of them, one which they could climb quickly if they needed to escape. 

Floodlights surrounded the building in the distance, and illuminated a 10-foot fence around the perimeter. It looked gloomy, just like all the others they’d torn down. 

“How does it look up there?” Shaw asked into her comms as she glanced behind them, scanning the trees.  

There was a couple gunshots and snow flicked up next to Reese’s feet. 

He grunted as he shot back, hearing a body thud to the floor. 

“Ready when you are,” Skye fed back into their earpieces from the Quinjet. 

“Two minutes,” Reese replied, and the pair ducked away from the area. 

They were careful not to leave a trace of their steps, lest the soldiers escape and come for them.   
Eventually, the pair had gotten a safe distance away from the building. They had woven around the cliff face, to get to the top of the raised land. 

Shaw looked through her scope and nodded at Reese. 

“Now,” he said into his comms. 

There was a rushing sound above and Shaw saw the exact moment when the missile hit the building. 

There was a thud, the ground shook.  

The air stood still. 

Her ears rang. 

Screaming. 

And then shooting. 

She whipped around to see Root around half a mile away, crouched on the edge of the cliff, manhandling a sniper rifle like an expert. It made Shaw feel... excited. And scared.   
But, most of all, Root looked  _hot._  

Shaw signalled to Reese to slip away and find their final target. There would be time for their reunion later.   
And approaching Root with a loaded weapon as they were on an assault against the Red Room didn’t seem like the best option. 

They slipped down to the field the way they came, and proceeded through the forest to the base, which was still being licked by huge, relentless flames. 

God, she couldn’t wait for this war to be over. 

Then they could all go somewhere peaceful together, somewhere warm and unlike Russia. Root would eventually relearn herself, like they had done once before, and they would live happily ever after. 

That thought would fuel Shaw’s fight for the rest of her life, no matter how long or short. 

They would get in, take down the Red Room, and then carry on with their lives. Become whole. 

Together. 

 

* * *

 

The field was freezing, but familiar.   
One moment the bullets rained down in her direction, and the next there was silence. 

No little girls. No snow. No people.   
And then she came back to reality. She shook her head and carried on the war, like she was supposed to. 

The snow was relentless and Codename Root struggled to see. She had gained the higher ground, perched on the edge of a cliff as she rained Hell on the Red Room base below her. 

She steeled herself and then shut her eyes. 

She was no one.   
She was nothing.   
She belonged to her Master. 

Memories were coming back to her, now. She kept pretending they weren’t to increase the time between the treatments. If her Master knew she could remember, he would take it all away again.  

Codename Root didn’t know how long she would have these memories. 

She was going after the last target, and she was positive Shaw would be there too. Even if they didn’t work for the same people, they were both still fighting against the Red Room.   
They were the Resistance, she remembered. And the Resistance never died. 

Shaw was real. She wasn’t just a name on a receipt she kept finding in her pocket.   
Shaw reminded her that she had humanity within her. She had feelings, emotions, and but that didn’t mean she wasn’t good at her job.   
Not having feelings made her efficient. But having feelings made her human. 

Adrenaline coursed through her veins as she pressed her finger down on the trigger, feeling the weapon jump angrily in her hands. 

The people below dropped like slaughtered sheep, though they weren’t so innocent.   
These people killed little girls. Tortured them. They had tortured her once, too. 

Her senses became overloaded with the stench of blood and fear reeking off the people below. She was enveloped by the chaos, found familiarity in it. A memory sprinted through her mind of a car chase with... Shaw. 

Her friend, Shaw. 

The receipt said they were friends, but Root thought they were something more. She remembered... kissing her more than once. And teasing her, and the man, Reese. 

It was probably her mind playing tricks on her.  

Codename Root had no friends. She didn’t want to be Codename Root anymore.   
She just wanted... to be. To live in peace.   
Once this war was over, she would live in peace, she decided. 

There was a whooshing sound, again, like earlier. But this time the missile hit the cliff. 

The ground shook and Root covered her head with her hands. 

Distractions.  

Root’s heartbeat echoed in her mind and she pressed her eyes shut. She ducked away from the burning trees and repelled down the cliff face, hitting the level ground a moment later. 

More soldiers revealed themselves with a hail of gunfire, but Root picked them off, one by one. Her training (which she finally remembered getting) kicked in and fighting became an instinct. 

As she was approaching the door to the burning base, her gun jammed. She tossed it to the ground with a look of distain.   
Knives would have to do. 

Holding the dagger precariously from her fingers, she silently made her way through the corridors. Many Red Room agents attacked her, but she remained calm as she slit their throats. She was surprised to see many on the floor already, leaving a bloody trail. Shaw and Reese were good.   
Root didn’t follow the trail. 

Her Master – her Papa – had told her where to find the target. 

She got to the steel door and looked around in time to see the flash grenades coming her way. 

She ducked for cover in a room and hid her face in the crook of her elbow.   
She practically growled, a gesture she remembered Shaw doing on many occasions, and swung the knife at the man who had thrown the grenades. 

He blocked her advances and kicked her square in the chest.   
Root stumbled back. 

That gave the man enough time to get out his gun. He extended his arm and shot her once. Twice. 

She glanced at the pools of blood blossoming on her arm and chest with indifference.   
She slapped the extended arm away but he got in a lucky punch on her jaw. 

The man came at her again with a swift kick, but she was expecting it. 

She blocked it with ease and kneed him in the crotch. The man folded in on himself and Root grabbed him by his scruffy hair, bringing his head down on to her knee. 

His unconscious body thudded to the floor. 

She stole his weapon. 

She licked her lips, pleasantly surprised at the copper taste in her mouth. Lucky punch. 

She spotted the iris scanner mounted on the side of the steel door and hauled up the body until she heard the door click open. 

She threw the door open wide and halted. 

Something like recognition passed over her features in an instant, and she shook her head, raising the gun. 

Easy. Shoot and run. 

Shoot and run. 

Why wasn’t she shooting? 

The woman in front of her had messy grey-ginger hair, in tight ringlets, barely restrained in a bun. She had thin lips, cavernous cheeks. Her glasses were slipping down the slope of her nose as she examined a report. As if she was completely unaware of the chaos around her, the building being close to collapse. 

The woman, the  _target_ , coughed gingerly and dabbed a handkerchief slowly at her lips in a gesture that looked automatic, suggesting a long-term illness. 

The woman clicked her tongue, an action that sent an uncomfortable shiver up Root’s spine. 

“I was wondering when you would come,” the target spoke in a harsh tone, “I’ve heard about your pathetic crusade against us.” 

Root shook her head; she hadn’t been warned about this. This... _Memory._ Why did it feel like a memory when she couldn’t remember anything?   
She remembered Shaw, and Reese, and Ivan, and even Katya. But not this woman. 

“You hold me accountable for making you like this, no?” The target continued, glancing up from behind the file. 

Root levelled her with a cold stare, one which the woman matched with icy green eyes. 

Root held up the gun and pointed it at the woman, “Up.” 

She could feel the blood-soaked material of her top sticking to her skin and winced in pain. 

The target didn’t move, “You don’t remember me, do you?” 

“I said get up.” 

“I guess you really did become marble.” 

Marble. The Red Room. The treatments tried to make her forget. 

She remembered this woman, the scientist who engineered the Red Room program. She remembered her Papa helping her with the operations. But ultimately, this woman was the one to blame for the Black Widow program.  

Root shoved the rifle against the target’s chest and gestured for her to walk. 

Eventually, she had led them outside, to where they were swallowed up by the forest.   
Thick branches above sheltered them from the light, and Root kicked the back of the target’s knee, making her fall to her knees in the snow. 

Root cracked the butt of the rifle against the woman’s cheek and felt satisfied with the red mark it left. 

“You created monsters,” Root struck her again, despite the pain in her arm, “I’m going to make sure you never do it again.” 

This was her mission. To destroy the Red Room. The world would be better for it, and Root would have fulfilled her purpose – to kill. That’s what she was made for, that’s why she wanted to be this emotionless machine. She wasn’t put on this Earth to fall in love with Shaw, that wasn’t the life she was meant to lead. Her life consisted of doing the wrong things for the right reasons.   
She had to kill this woman.   
The world would be better for it. 

The target grinned, teeth bloody and eyes wild, “And yet you don’t even know my name.”  

“Shut up,” Root tossed the gun away, using her fists instead. 

She beat the woman’s face into a pulp until her fists started to ache.   
The sounds of war continued in the near distance and Root knew now wasn’t a time to dwell on morality. 

This woman was a monster. She created monsters.   
She had to die. 

Root straddled her hips to keep her from running away, but was mildly surprised that the target didn’t put up a fight. Perhaps she realized it was time for one of her little monsters to destroy her. 

Blood diffused into snow – both her own and the target’s. 

It felt like déjà vu. 

Katya’s death was almost exactly like this. But Katya wasn’t a monster, she was just a child. 

She frowned when a name appeared in her mind. 

“Koslova,” Root said, “You’re Koslova.” 

The woman looked as if she was trying to smirk, though she gagged at the same time so it was hard to tell. 

“You were meant to be the best,” Koslova spat out, “You and your father. The dream team. Until you both chose the wrong side.” 

Root snarled and grabbed a knife from her belt, putting it against the sagging skin of Koslova’s neck. 

“You owe all Red Room agents a life,” Root muttered quietly. 

She heard a snap of a twig behind her and frowned at Koslova, who just blinked indifferently. 

Codename Root had already eliminated threats. Root must have overlooked something. 

She ducked out of the way just in time to avoid two consecutive shots that were fired in their direction. 

Koslova wasn’t so lucky. She grimaced and twitched for a beat and then stilled. 

 _Good riddance,_  Root thought. 

She rolled and grabbed her rifle off the ground, firing off a couple of shots. 

She needed to find cover. 

“Root!” 

She halted, weapon dangling uselessly from her hands. 

Root turned slowly, with a smirk gracing her features. 

Shaw was real. Not just a memory that didn’t feel like her own. Not just feelings that didn’t feel like her own. 

Shaw stepped forward and smiled softly, like she was glad to see her, “It’s me, Shaw.” 

“I know who you are,” Root reassured. 

“You’re hurt,” Shaw’s eyes scanned over her body. 

She waved her off with a roll of her eyes, but then felt a sickness rising in her stomach.   
All the pain, all the feelings the treatment was supposed to suppress were rising within her. Her stomach hurt, her arm ached. She felt lightheaded. 

She dropped the weapon to the floor. 

“Root?” 

Root fell to the ground, her face meeting soft snow. She let her eyes fall closed, revelling in the coldness making her numb. 

“No, stay with me,” Shaw grabbed her by the coat and yanked her on to her back. 

“It’s okay,” Root said quietly, “I remember you, Shaw.” That was enough. 

They had taken down the Red Room, and now her mission was over. 

“It’s okay,” she nodded again. 

She wasn’t marble. The Red Room didn’t control her life. She was in the arms of the one person she had actually loved. Everything was right with the world. 

“You should go,” she continued, gagging up blood and spluttering on Shaw’s uniform. Only then did she notice it was S.H.I.E.L.D. issue, “Go, they’ll wonder where you are.” 

“Shut up, Root, and let me save your life,” Shaw said as she ripped up her soaked top, exposing the wounds. 

Shaw looked panicked as she glanced around.   
Root held her knife up to Shaw’s neck. 

“Go,” Codename Root repeated. 

Shaw frowned and grabbed the knife off her, though Root didn’t put up much of a fight. 

Shaw sterilised the knife with a lighter and placed the burning metal of the blade against Root’s wounds.   
Root struggled to keep her scream in, and clenched her teeth together.   
Shaw smirked at her and Root looked up to catch her gaze. 

The Resistance had won. 

They had actually won against the Red Room. 

They were heroes. They would be known as those who saved humanity. These actions meant something.   
_They_ meant something. 

With her mind swimming with pain and relief, and the snow falling softly down on them, and the final shots of the war near them, Root leaned up painfully and captured Shaw’s lips with her own. 

Shaw kissed her back, her hands cradling Root’s cheeks delicately. 

They kissed without abandonment, without a care in the world. The kiss was slow, intimate, like they were relearning each other. Root felt an ache go through her, craving the touch for so long, longer than she could remember. 

She heard a cough and Shaw pulled away. 

“Don’t let me interrupt,” Root heard a man say. 

Root groaned and shook her head at Reese, who was approaching them. 

“Are you better, now?” Reese asked her, tentatively reaching Shaw’s side. 

“I think so,” Root nodded. They would need time before they could trust each other, of course. But Root was sure this was her family, her Papa be damned. These were the people who cared about her.

The people who loved her.

“She needs a medic,” Shaw said as she hooked her hand under Root’s knees, the other on her back.

She picked her up and Root wound her arms around Shaw’s neck, nuzzling into her chest to get warmth. 

“You trust me, right?” Shaw asked, looking at her so softly. 

Root would have melted on the spot if she wasn’t so cold. She nodded, replying with language from pure instinct, “Of course, sweetie.” 

Shaw cracked a smile at that, “God, I hate your pet-names.” 

Root grinned back, “No you don’t.” 

“No, I don’t.”

Everything was right with the world. Shaw was meant to be her killer; turns out she was her savior.

Root didn't think assassins like them got happy endings. But maybe heroes did.

And they had more than earned the right to be dubbed heroes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Askdjflsd the original plan was to have them both shoot each other but I felt this offered more closure and I legit just changed it last night, I hope you enjoyed it!!


End file.
